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On Tuesdays at nine, Eddie Brock took the Ducati to Lucky Strike Bowling and lost three games to himself. He got the right arm, and Venom got the left arm, and he always, always lost. It was fine, though, because bowling meant that he could down a pitcher of flat Budweiser and tater tots doused in buffalo sauce since Venom refused to let them eat wings. (No! Not even boneless, Eddie! he would growl in Eddie's ear, making him slam his hand down on the sticky surface of the bar top and making everyone in the vicinity jump halfway out of their chairs.) If he lost, which he always did, he would stop on the way home and order a large chocolate frosty from Wendy's to eat with fries that were cold (and halfway gone) by the time they got home.
"I hope you're not going around telling people you're ambidextrous." A kid with washed-out purple hair and too many eyebrow piercings sidled up alongside Eddie. He had bought two bowling balls off some guy on Craigslist the day before- one was a respectable eleven pounds, and the other was sixteen. Eddie didn't notice them at first, which was probably a side effect of spending half of his time in public talking to himself. The kid tapped their own ear, the same one that Eddie wore his headset on.
"Eddie, look."
"Huh?" Eddie said, more to Venom than the kid, and turned around.
"You suck with your right hand." The kid glanced up at the scoreboard. It had just played an animation of a bowling ball rolling down the Golden Gate Bridge and knocking bowling pin tourists into the water. Venom had thought it was hilarious. Eddie was losing, 78 to 240, and he was trying to be gracious about it.
"Gee, thanks a lot."
"No, no, you're doing great… with your left hand."
"Gee, thanks a lot." He said again.
'Don't be a sore loser, Eddie.'
'Shut up.' Eddie thought back as hard as he could.
"You think you're gonna play another perfect game?"
"Probably." He sighed.
"Have you ever thought about letting your left hand join a bowling league?"
"My right hand hasn't, but my left hand definitely has." Venom waved with his left hand.
"Would you want to join ours?" The kid pointed to the other side of the bowling alley, where a group of equally young, equally pimply kids waved back.
'Ooh, yes, yes! Say yes. Say yes!'
'No.'
'You never let us have any fun. No eating bad guys, no bowling league.'
"No," Eddie said out loud. The kid wilted, visibly, and Eddie tried not to flinch at the ear-splitting whine ringing in his head.
"Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me." They said. "I'm Andy."
"Eddie." He was already grabbing his eleven-pounder off the ball return. It wasn't his best work; he knew that. He knew that his social skills lately had been subpar, and the last human beings he had willingly spoken to were his ex-fiancée and her new fiancé, but he didn't care. He didn't have time for any more than that.
'Why can't we join the bowling league?'
"Because."
'Because why? Because Eddie is a sore loser.' Venom already knew why. He didn't need to ask 'because why’ he just had to rifle through Eddie's thoughts (or not rifle, they were right there, on the top of the metaphorical desk of his brain, stamped 'URGENT'). But Venom liked to make him explain himself. Because he was a dickhead. As much of a dickhead as an alien oil slick could be.
"You know why." Eddie bowled a gutter ball and growled under his breath.
'Sore loser. Do you need us to ask for bumpers?'
"Oh, fuck you." He could feel Andy and their friends staring.
'You're afraid they'll like me more.' He could feel Venom swirling down to his feet, lining him up with the lane, and taking a step. When he let go of the ball, it was a strike. Of course it was.
"Not possible, buddy." It was.
'Let us play. We need more friends. We like Anne and Dan, but we are lonely. We are good at bowling.'
"You need more friends, you're lonely. I'm fine."
'You can't lie to us, Eddie.' The worst part was Eddie knew he'd lost already, lost from the moment he turned around and laid eyes on Andy. Maybe he was a sore loser. 'You have so many you things. We want an I thing.' And Venom had sounded so small and pathetic that Eddie had felt bad for him, so he had introduced himself to Andy's friends and agreed to meet with them on Tuesdays (to practice, even though Venom didn't need to practice) and Thursdays (to play against the other teams in the league).
The next week, Andy gave him an extra-extra-large shirt that read 'THREE STRIKES YOU'RE IN!' with Venom's name on the breast, and when Eddie put it on, no one commented on the very glaring fact that the shirt was way too big for him.
"My… partner wants to wear it around the house," Eddie explained, even though no one had asked. They all smiled at him and patted him on the shoulder, and he could feel Venom glowing with happiness, warm and bright in his chest.
'Your partner.' Eddie blushed.
Eddie bowled last on the team; a girl named Saachi called him their secret weapon, and Andy made him pinky promise not to forget that he wasn't ambidextrous yet.
'Like Julius Caesar.'
"What?" He said out loud.
"I said, don't forget you're shit with your right hand."
"Oh, yeah." Venom bowled another strike, and Eddie could feel him smiling with self-satisfaction as a bowling ball shot down a bowling pin with a rifle on the display.
'We watch lots of documentaries when you're asleep.'
Eddie hadn’t told Venom why he didn't want to join the bowling league. He had refused, even though it was stupid to do, because Venom already knew. Venom was annoyingly stubborn like that, and Eddie couldn't decide if him pretending he couldn't basically read his mind was polite or not.
What Eddie was afraid to admit was that he was worried. He was worried that he was the parasite, that he was the loser (a sore loser). He was a pussy.
He was afraid a few college-aged kids would think he was crazy, that he talked to himself, bowled alone, had no friends, and had no fashion sense.
He was afraid he smelled like chicken shit (thank you, Sonny and Cher) and that he had sweaty palms and that he couldn't carry a fucking conversation to save his life.
Sometimes when they were out with the kids from Three Strikes, he repeated the jokes that Venom grumbled in his ear, and when they all laughed he pretended that he could do this. That he could go out in public and act like a normal person who could function on his own, who didn't singlehandedly ruin his own life, his own career and his fiancee's life while he was at it. (Not that Anne's life was ruined, no, it was the opposite of that, she was better off without him.)
He still had to choke down apologies when he let Venom hunt, and he hadn't felt like himself since the last time he was in front of a camera.
He could barely keep a bamboo plant alive, and they only needed watered once a week.
Venom gave and gave, and he took. He brought both of them places, he fed them a diet fit for a twelve-year-old king, but that was it. If Dan made Anne feel safe, Eddie was sure that he made Venom feel … unsafe.
He was a pussy. He was a loser and he had started to bristle whenever Mrs. Chen called Venom a parasite because he felt like one himself. What did he have to offer, really? Was Eddie Brock really the paragon of humanity? He didn't feel like it. He felt like an inferior species. He felt like Venom would be better off without him. (He didn't know if he would be better off without Venom. He didn't think he would be.)
'We are leaving now.'
Eddie had been thinking all of it a little too loudly, a little too clearly. His thoughts were spelled out and circled in red marker in his mind, mapping out his insecurities for Venom to comb over when he was distracted. He felt creeping warmth across his shoulders and sweat dripping down his chest and his back.
"Are you good?" Luka furrowed his eyebrows at Eddie. "Do you need to eat something?" He pushed a basket of wings at Eddie, and he hoped (prayed) that Luka could read the regret in his eyes as Venom slapped the basket off the high-top table.
"Shit. Sorry." He moaned. "Sorry. I'll buy you a new basket next time. I'll- I'm sorry. I have to- I gotta."
"Eddie?" Saachi reached for his arm, and he snatched it back. What was he doing? He was in his thirties, bowling with a group of kids because his… because Venom had begged him. Because the alien he was sharing his body with was lonely, because he wasn't doing a good enough job at being a human being to take care of both of them.
"I gotta go. I'll text you. Or something."
"Do you need a ride?"
"Fuck, no. I'll get home. I just gotta go."
"Eddie."He ripped the headset off. It was a cheap piece of shit, and it broke when it hit the tarry pavement. Venom hissed in his ear. "Stop." He didn't stop. He swung a leg over the seat of his Ducati. His left hand still felt numb, and when he tried to flex his fingers they were stiff, like they’d fallen asleep.
"You hungry?" Maybe he could ignore it, maybe he could pretend that he hadn't wrapped up his insecurities up in a bow and left them for Venom to open like it was Christmas morning.
"We're upset."
"I'm fine, V. Leave it."
"No."
Eddie heaved a sigh so deep that it felt good, and he could feel the extra oxygen hit his bloodstream.
"We are not fine."
"Why don't you tell me how we're feeling then?" Eddie liked it when they were a 'we'. He liked to be a part of the plurality of it. It made him feel important. He didn't want to admit that, though, he wanted to be nasty instead; it was one of his many character flaws.
"You think that you're not good enough for us. You think that we don't need you."
It was different from when Eddie and Anne were a 'we'. It was different from when the kids from the bowling alley were a 'we'. Eddie and Anne could be reduced to Eddie minus Anne. The kids could find someone else who didn't throw their wings on the galaxy print carpet in Lucky Strike. There was still a 'we' without Eddie.
To Venom, there was no 'we' without Eddie. No 'we' without them together, without eddieandvenom, no way to separate them from one another.
"You could find someone better."
"We couldn't." When Venom says 'we', he means Eddie too. It should be obvious to him, but it's not. "You're perfect for us. We take care of you and you take care of us and we keep the city safe from bad guys. You are ours. We don't want to find someone better." Eddie was Venom's and Eddie was his own. Eddie belonged to himself as much as he belonged to Venom. "Let us drive home."
The night air was cool on Eddie's skin. He felt like he was boiling under the surface, so used to being sticky and sweaty that the air felt like a caress on his skin. He didn't mind it. If that's what it took for two to be one, then he would suffer it. He would bear it. He would let Venom be the left hand or the right hand or both legs. He would do it. He would.
'I'm afraid you'll leave me.' He thought. He wasn't brave enough to say it out loud.
'We saved the world for you, Eddie. You are our home.'
If it sounded suspiciously like what Eddie had said to Anne once about San Francisco, he didn't mind. The words were plucked straight from his mind, delivered to him on a silver platter.
"I love you." He said into the wind. There was a weight on his back and arms around his waist and moisture on his cheeks and he'd need to buy Luka a new basket of chicken wings next week, and he would never be alone again.