Chapter Text
Venom notices it on probably week three. And he doesn’t say anything then because, frankly, he assumes it’s cancer.
Cancer is something that seems to just happen. Kind of an alien concept to a symbiote, but not hard to understand. Extra cells that serve no purpose. In his first host he assumed it was normal, some organ that had to grow in late. By the time he got to Eddie he had enough human knowledge. It was what Carlton Drake was trying to cure. It was a pursuit, for humans, the elimination of these rogue cells. A tiny cluster might grow slowly or fast, but sooner or later it would encroach on Eddie’s organs and render them nonfunctional.
He doesn’t say anything when he notices because it will probably upset Eddie and when he’s stressed everything tastes worse and feels prickly. The other reason is… more self-serving. Symbiotic. It’s a great word, Venom thinks. Human language (at least the one Eddie speaks) is a little ugly, a little clunky, it doubles back on itself and spits in the face of logic. But symbiote is a nice word. He makes an effort to look it up. Symbiote, or symbiont, a creature engaged in a symbiotic relationship: "the living together of unlike organisms".
He doesn’t tell Eddie for the same reason he doesn’t do anything, at first. It’s because when he scouts out a cyst or tumor or something else that isn’t supposed to be there, he eats it. And he figures it won’t hurt to give it a few more weeks to get a little bigger.
Other stuff gets in the way. Venom doesn’t like to think of himself as needy, but he’s aware that he takes up a lot of Eddie’s attention. Eddie is self sufficient until he isn’t. He’s a host until he isn’t. It can be anywhere, at any time, although now that they’ve been together more than a few months, Venom likes to think that he’s better at spotting it.
They unlock the door to the apartment and Eddie chucks the newspaper in the direction of the couch. Venom waits until Eddie’s in the bathroom scrubbing dirt out from under his nails to manifest himself.
You’re upset.
“Jesus!” Eddie smacks a hand on the edge of the sink. “Don’t just pop out like that when I’m in front of a mirror. Freaks me out.”
Sorry. You’re upset.
“I’m not upset, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
We’ve been over this. I can taste your neurochemicals. You’re upset.
“Always with the fucking neurochemicals,” Eddie says. But he sits down on the lid of the toilet. It feels sad to be like this.
You can talk to me.
“Sometimes I can. Sometimes you want to eat my organs.”
Not anymore. Venom tries not to be hurt by this. When Eddie is sad he’s kind of unstoppable. He’s a--what’s that thing--a steamroller. On a hill. Venom climbs part-way out of him and manifests a hand to cup the bottom of Eddie’s jaw.
Talk to me, Eddie.
“I don’t know. I feel… can you feel that? Empty or something.”
I can fix that, Eddie.
“Not that kind of empty.”
Still. He can feel Eddie’s pulse speeding up. Blood moving downwards. But he waits for Eddie to make the first move, because it’s always better that way. It takes a moment. Eddie drums his fingers on his knee. Venom doesn’t make a move. Stays perfectly still, curled like a shield behind his lungs. Then Eddie peels off his t-shirt. He drops it beside the bath mat. And then it’s the belt, he unbuckles it. That’s all the invitation Venom needs.
They fuck in the bathroom a lot. Mostly because Eddie seems annoyed when he has to wash his bedsheets if they’ve been freshly changed. But Venom likes it in there anyways. The smell of bleach, the look of cum on the tiles. And he likes it in Eddie. In the literal and… the other sense of the term. He slides out of Eddie’s dick painfully slow, because he likes that almost-choking sound he makes when he’s driven right to the edge.
“Fuck me already,” Eddie wheezes, and Venom is more than happy to oblige. Mapping out the nerves in the human body was almost laughably easy, but there was a learning curve to manipulating them. He gauges Eddie’s enjoyment through sound, heartbeat, spasms. Riding an orgasm in the human body is--more of a rush than he can remember otherwise. And it’s made better by the way Eddie feels it, the way he staggers and Venom has to catch them, the way he melts at Venom’s touch.
It’s good. It’s good.
Your cum tastes pretty good, Eddie.
“Don’t say that.”
It’s true though.
“To you maybe. I think you have a weird sense of taste.” It does taste good. Venom’s glad he stopped leaving it around. One or two times he just spit it somewhere into Eddie’s body cavity. On one occasion he balled it in some of his cells and sort of forgot about it. Eating it is better. Neater, too. Eddie likes it when they’re neat, which Venom didn’t really get until they’d been sharing the apartment for a while. It was nicer when it was neat. Things had a place, and they could be put in it, and that was nice. Soothing. Sensible.
Eddie drags them to bed after that. He has to sleep a lot more than Venom, so he stays awake for a while flipping through a magazine on the bedside table. Then he retreats inside to look around, check that everything is in working order.
Heart, lungs, liver--that thing is still growing, pretty fast. It almost doubles in size each time Venom checks, and he’s going to do something about it soon. But not yet. It’s not causing any problems yet, so it can wait. He goes back to the magazine for a while. And then he goes to sleep.
[X]
Eddie wakes up to his phone. He gets so few texts that he doesn’t turn the sound off, so it buzzes off the side of his bed and lands with a soft thunk in the carpet. He digs over the side with an arm before begrudgingly opening his eyes.
“Hey, you awake?” he mumbles.
What. So probably he wasn’t.
“Phone,” Eddie just mumbles, pointing. Venom makes the effort to manifest just so he can sigh loudly in Eddie’s ear before he grabs the phone and deposits it in his hand.
It’s Anne. She’s calling, not texting. Anne never texts.
“Did you forget already?”
“W-no, nope, didn’t forget. I’m putting my shoes on now.” He swats at Venom before he can say anything to contradict this (although it would probably be just in Eddie’s head). There’s something uniquely stressful about an entity no one else can hear shit-talking people in public. It feels precarious or something.
“Sure Eddie,” Anne says, and hangs up. It’s kind of odd to hang out with your ex-fiance, probably, but Eddie doesn’t really have other friends, and if he’s being honest, he kind of likes Dan. That thick heat of jealousy isn’t the same anymore. It’s hard to imagine being in… any kind of relationship after Venom. He eats a few handfuls of raw meat out of the fridge (relationships are about compromise) and heads out.
Venom is weirdly bouncy. He squirms around Eddie’s organs as they’re waiting for the cable car. He gets more stir crazy than Eddie, which he guesses makes sense since he’s not usually the one driving. And he likes Anne. Not in a… not in the way he likes Eddie. But he likes seeing her. It’s hot on the cable car, despite it being February.
What’s wrong with you? Venom asks, as Eddie shifts uncomfortably in his seat for the third time. Nothing’s wrong. He feels vaguely sick lots of the time. It probably has something to do with the kind of shit he eats to keep Venom happy. He doesn’t dignify the question with an answer, because it’ll pass, and he doesn’t feel like looking like a weirdo on the cable car today.
When they get off he feels better. It’s warm for February, but the breeze is nice, even if it tastes like smog. Anne lets him in and he follows her upstairs. She has a bunch of papers spread out over the kitchen table, and a lot of magazines. Eddie picks one up at random.
“City Mom?” he asks. What’s that supposed to mean? And look at that ugly infant. Eddie stifles a snort. The kid on the cover is kind of… lumpy looking.
“Oh yeah. Dan and I are--thinking about trying.” It takes Eddie a minute to sort of process that, because it’s so far outside the realm of shit that’s normally circulating in his brain. Trying what? Venom asks, and when Eddie doesn’t say anything he peels out of him and asks Anne.
“Oh, uh, for a baby. Trying to have a baby. I don’t know if you… do that kind of thing on your planet.”
No, we have different methods, he says. Eddie winces. Not out of embarrassment though. His stomach is turning over.
“You want some tea? Either… of you?” Anne asks. Venom slips back into Eddie and tells him definitely not.
“You hate tea,” he says, dropping onto the couch and willing his stomach to calm down.
“I’m trying to cut out coffee.”
“Ew,” Eddie says. Anne just laughs. She’s putting the kettle on anyways. A baby. Were they ever going to do that? Probably not, honestly. When they were together they didn’t talk about it. Anne, specifically, didn’t talk about it. She steered conversations away from it. But Dan was different. When you’re with a surgeon and his name is Dan of all things, it’s not the same.
He’s not sad about it, it’s more bewildering. He can’t imagine Anne as a mom but he thinks she’d be good at it.
“You guys’d be good parents,” he says. Anne turns around to lean on the counter and smiles.
“Thanks, Eddie.” She turns back to the tea and then pauses and looks back again. “Are you okay? You look kind of… sweaty.”
Eddie opens his mouth to say that he’s fine but it immediately becomes clear that he’s not fine. So he bolts for the bathroom and heaves his guts into the toilet. Anne comes into the doorway, makes a noise of surprise, and then leaves. She comes back a minute later with a glass of water, which Eddie gratefully accepts.
“Are you making him eat weird stuff again?” she asks, folding her arms.
“No. ” Venom manifests out to say that for Anne’s benefit. Eddie coughs into the toilet.
“I’m gonna go home,” he says. Anne has her eyes narrowed. She’s staring down Venom, and Venom’s staring back.
“You better not be doing anything to hurt him.”
“I dislike this as much as he does, ” Venom assures her.
“S’probably just bad meat. Or milk. I never check the dates on anything.”
“Gross. Call if you need something,” Anne says, following him to the door. He nods. Out on the street he feels better again, but only marginally. The relief of vomiting is wearing off.
You think their baby will be ugly?
“Don’t be rude.” The cable car is approaching at what feels like a snail’s pace. He just wants to get home and sleep the rest of this shitty Saturday away.
Just asking.
“It’s rude.”
I wouldn’t say it to them .
“Good to know.”
Are you okay? Oof. There’s genuine concern in that, and he almost hates it when Venom is genuine with him. Just because it… it feels precarious. So he steers the conversation back to Anne and Dan.
“It’s wild you know, that they could just be parents. In less than a year.”
You call me a parasite but do you know how reproduction works for your species? It’s disgusting.
“Uhh, I mean, I guess.” The cable car rolls up. Eddie gets on. He’s staring at his phone scrolling through twitter and thinking less than nothing when Venom stands them up and marches them up to the doors. As soon as the car comes to a stop Venom is shouting Get off so he gets off and walks out onto the semi-empty sidewalk.
“Uh, care to let me in on what’s happening?” He’s met with dead silence. “V? You gotta talk to me. If I don’t know what’s going on--”
We need to go home. Now.
“That’s what we were doing, before you made us get off the cable car.”
Slow. Let me drive. Eddie throws his hands up and as he does Venom coats them in black.