Chapter Text
“No,” Eddie said, laughing, and it was always good when Eddie laughed. Everything got warm and his shoulders shook. It was a full-body laugh, the kind a lot of humans didn’t do because it made other people look or frown. Eddie was like that. He never cared if people looked-- it was the reason he spoke so carelessly to Venom outside. Venom’s host was brave and independent from other humans like that. “No, V. We don’t need McDonalds. We had that last night.”
Eddieee, Venom complained, curling around his arm. But fries Eddie! And the cubed onions, you love the cubed onions! He moved a little faster, thinking about the meat that wasn’t meat but was still so good, about the crunch of the fries. Eddieeeee...
Because here was the thing- when Venom wanted or needed something, unless it was eating people, Eddie usually said yes eventually. He liked the things they did together- liked climbing, liked eating lots of food and chocolate, liked running fast and sometimes eating bad people. Venom's human was brave and smart and he liked being part of them, which was… new. New and different and exciting, regardless of the months they’d spent together.
Eddie let out a sigh, rubbing the back of his neck. “Fine,” he allowed, and Venom rejoiced as Eddie turned, heading down a different street, cutting across alleys. “You’re gonna make us fat, V. You know that, don’t you? How are you going to climb up skyscrapers when you’ve got a potbelly?”
Venom laughed. No potbelly. I eat more of your food than you eat. So I get bigger and you don’t, and I won’t have a potbelly until I want one. He manifested beneath Eddie’s hoodie and flowed along Eddie’s back, tracing the tattoos he knew so well. Eddie had so many tattoos. Humans couldn’t feel the ridges or whirls of these older ones, really, but Venom could. He hadn’t understood tattoos for a long time, but they were decoration apparently, and Eddie said they hurt.
His human was like that. Undergo pain for this kind of beauty.
Eddie shifted slightly, rolling his shoulders back, sending the tattoos shifting and dancing against Venom’s tendrils. Eddie could never decide if it was ticklish or something else, something warmer and sharper but equally sensitive. Venom liked to test that reflex out.
“People are going to see my shirt moving and have questions,” Eddie informed him, but it wasn’t a real reprimand. He jogged across the street and Venom shifted across Eddie’s chest, flattening and focusing at the soft rumbling sound behind them. The rumbling had been continuing for a while now, one of dozens of cars on the street. This particular car kept turning when they turned. The rumbling should have gone a different way by now, should have diverted away from them.
Eddie? Venom poked out from behind his hoodie very, very slightly so he could look behind his human. That car has been following us. Do you know them?
Eddie didn’t look right away, then glanced back casually, scanning the road before turning forward and continuing again. “No,” he said, voice tightening a little as trepidation flickered through their minds, always joined. “You’re sure they’re following us?”
Been following us a long time. Kept waiting for them to turn. Venom swirled across more of Eddie’s skin, being careful not to be obvious. He wanted to be able to shield him quickly if they needed. Don’t trust it. Can’t see in the windows and it’s night. He looked around quickly, using Eddie’s eyes. Not many places to go. There were a few, but nowhere good. Venom liked to be high or to be in the subway. He didn’t like Eddie in the subway, but if he was wearing Venom it was okay. It was a good place for fighting, in the abandoned tunnels.
“All right. Don’t come out yet. We don’t know what it is.” Eddie raised a hand, massaging at his chest, rubbing against Venom softly. “It could be someone like Skirth, a lead on a job or something. It might be fine.”
Venom growled, but conceded the point. Eddie was a journalist and he wrote so much about so many things, sometimes people wanted to talk to him, to tell him their stories. He understood that. Venom told Eddie stories, too. His human listened well and asked good questions and he understood things that you didn’t always say.
I will stay, he promised his human now, rubbing back against his hand. He loved it when Eddie touched him. It made him feel less like a parasite and more like something else, like part of Eddie. Eddie rubbed the back of his neck when he thought. Anne rubbed her fluffy cat when she talked. Dan often rubbed Anne’s knee with a thumb. It was a normal touch and it was nice. Could be nothing.
Eddie chuckled and ducked into an alley, then up into a doorway, out of sight of the main road. A minute passed, then two, and the car turned onto the road, white and nondescript. Eddie waited, then stepped off the doorstop when the driver’s window was even with them. The car stopped and Eddie rapped on the glass with his knuckles.
“Hey, there,” he said cheerfully when the window started to roll down, a man in a dark t-shirt and vest looking at him evenly. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“You’re Eddie Brock, right?” The man’s eyes flickered over Venom’s other slowly, assessing, and Eddie tilted his head. Venom stayed still, unhappily. His human was famous. People knew him from the internet. Knowing Eddie’s name was normal, it was okay. That didn’t mean anything.
“That’s right,” he agreed carefully, slipping his hands into his pockets. The man nodded slowly, then reached out and pressed a button in the car.
Instant agony.
Eddie dropped to the ground, screaming along with Venom as their bodies vibrated and tore and knit themselves back together. It was that sound, that goddamn sound, the exact same as the one Anne had played on them twice and there was nothing like it in the world. It was like being burned by the rocket, or the videos on electrocution he had seen, or like being ripped off of Eddie. Except that he was actually being ripped off Eddie, he realized in horror, vibrated away from his host before sinking back into his skin again.
Eddie curled into a ball, hands clawed over their ears in an effort to try to lessen the noise. The vibrations got worse as the seconds passed and his human reached out, catching Venom when their bodies split, pulling him back again and again as his voice finally broke, keeping his symbiote with him even as Venom writhed, unable to control his motions. The noise stopped for a moment and Eddie slumped into the dirt, breathing hard.
“V?” he managed, pressing a hand over his heart, where Venom had buried himself under his other’s skin. “V, you okay? We okay?”
Venom buried himself deeper, making the ball smaller with a tiny whimper he was embarrassed of. We’re okay, he agreed, and cuddled a little closer to Eddie’s heart, the sensation of it and the warmth soothing. We need to run.
Eddie made a noise of assent, pushing himself onto his hands and knees as the door of the car opened, feet landing in the alleyway beside them. Venom started to move, spreading through Eddie’s body so he could take over and get them out of there.“Go fuck yourself,” Eddie said to the other man, voice rough and hoarse from the screaming, but then the sound was playing again and his human only managed to crawl a few steps before falling again, wrapping himself in a ball again like he could muffle the sound by the time it reached Venom, still mostly curled in his host’s chest. The sound increased in pitch, and it was too much too sharp too harsh-
And Venom pulled away, reacting on instinct long buried and trained into his species, pulling away from his host in an effort to escape the noise, escape the situation, his mind no longer coherent. He realized his mistake instantly, the world too large and too hollow, too cold as it seeped into his form, the air polluted and cloying the way it always was when he was out on his own.
“V, you can’t breathe,” Eddie was saying hoarsely, reaching out for the symbiote clumsily, and Venom moved to connect again as the noise cut off abruptly once more.
Glass slammed down around Venom and he screamed and slammed against the containment, his human’s fingers brushing against the thick material in futility. The air inside the tube was purifying even as Venom moved around to find a crack or hole or any opening at all, and he recognized the containment tube with a sort of violence. LIFE. This was the LIFE foundation again, this was theirs, he was trapped, his human was outside-
“V!” Eddie stumbled to his feet and the containment tube was set aside, the man who had wielded it slamming a fist into the chest and stomach of Venom’s other. Eddie stumbled, trying to grab him, and the man picked up a brick, smashing it down on Eddie’s temple hard. Blood sprayed across the glass of the tube as Eddie hit the ground. He tried to roll onto his side, dragging himself closer to Venom’s container, still trying to help him, still trying to protect him, even as he bled. Venom shoved himself against the container, desperately trying to find a hole, a crack, anything, anything it took to get to his human where he belonged.
“V,” Eddie said roughly, reaching out again, and the tube was lifted, the stranger landing a hard kick to Eddie’s jaw that sent Venom’s host crashing back into the brick wall. Eddie dropped, bright blood brilliant both against the dirt smeared across his stubble-covered cheek as well as where it was dripping down the side of Venom’s tank, and he didn’t get back up. Venom froze, unable to move, fury and shock waging a war for control.
“Don’t worry. The recon and disposal team will be around for you in a minute,” the man said, turning and carrying Venom back toward the car.
Venom screamed, empty and silent in this cold world where he didn’t have his host, and slammed against the container hard enough to unsteady the person carrying him. He couldn’t look away from the blood, couldn’t look away from Eddie laying there so still.
Eddie was never still. Eddie was always running and laughing and talking and eating, jogging and socializing. Eddie was never still. Venom threw himself against the container again in panic and desperation. He would get free and get to Eddie and heal him and then they would eat this human even if Eddie said no because Eddie was good but Venom was not and this human hurt Venom's Eddie and mercy wasn’t going to happen. He needed to get free, needed to get to Eddie, needed to heal him right now.
But the tank had been built to keep symbiotes in, and though he managed to topple the container to the ground once, he was quickly picked up again. “Stop it,” the man snapped at him, opening the side of the van and fitting the container into a holding unit there, “Or I’ll tell the guys to put Brock through a meat grinder.” He slammed the door shut and got back in the car, and then they were driving, further and further, and all Venom could do was lash uselessly against the glass and hope that the bumps under the wheels weren’t his human.
They stopped. Venom couldn’t see anything from the low position of his holding unit, so he didn’t know where they were. LIFE? No, they had blown up LIFE, he and Eddie had destroyed it. They had to be somewhere else. Venom didn’t know how long they’d been driving. Everything felt different outside a host. Time didn’t move the same. Light didn’t work the same. Nothing did. Everything was too-sharp and in neon colors that didn’t make sense the way they did when Venom was bonded.
Even in the darkness, everything almost glowed.
“Yeah, yeah,” the man said, and Venom realized slowly that he was on the phone, this fact enough to distract the symbiote from watching the blood dry on the glass. “Yeah, I have it. We’re at the exchange location now. Did they pick up Brock?”
Venom moved close, listening hard. Was Eddie okay? Was he safe? Of course he was never really safe, not without Venom, but was he okay?
“Yeah, sure.” The man laughed. “Tell them to hurry up already, this thing is freaking me out.” He hung up and got out of the car. There was a beat of nothing, and then the door slid open, the man peering down at Venom as he smoked a cigarette. He blew smoke at the tank. “Ugly as sin,” he muttered, shaking his head. “That’s just so fucked up.”
Venom managed a hissing sound, whirling around the cage. He wished he could manifest, could show his teeth and use his voice and make this stranger- who was he calling ugly? He was no treat to look at himself- see what freaky was.
The man blanched slightly, shaking his head, and looked away. “So fucking gross,” he muttered, spinning a gun around his hand absently. Something blurred in the distance behind him and Venom tried to examine it curiously, then drew back away from the glass quickly as the gun was caught by what looked like a white rope, whipping out of the LIFE agent’s hand in one fast motion. “What the f-”
“Hey, there,” a voice said cheerfully, the vehicle rocking as something landed on top of it. Venom twirled around the tank, trying to look, but whoever it was, they were on top of the vehicle completely and not leaned forward enough for Venom to see anything. “Sorry, but you’re just looking so sketchy with your white van and the abandoned parking lot and the gun. The bald look doesn’t really help either, dude. What’s in the van? Drugs are one thing. People are a different one. Let’s hope it’s drugs.”
White rope-like webbing slammed into the man’s chest, apparently hard enough to knock him onto the ground, and a figure in red landed lightly on the ground where the man had been standing a second ago. The creature was all red with white eyes and, for a disorienting moment, Venom found himself wondering if it was some strange, young, sickly symbiote. The creature was skinny, far too much so to be healthy, but his eyes were the right shape, his red deep and rich, embellished by blue here and there. Was it a symbiote? Something new, something that was maybe different, like he was?
The maybe-symbiote reached out, pulling Venom’s container out of the van and pulling him outside to set on the pavement in the light. It crouched beside the tank, tilting its head down at Venom, clearly studying him. “Whoa,” the creature said slowly, and the voice wasn’t quite right for a symbiote, either… although maybe it just had an exceptionally young host? No, that wasn’t right- Riot had had a young host, and the voice had been very young too, but it had still sounded like a symbiote. This creature didn’t, so what was it?
This line of questioning was immediately solved when the creature reached up, pulling at its neck and peeling a mask off its face, leaving utterly human features peering down at him. Not a symbiote, just a human. No symbiote would let its host do something that stupid, nor would the mask lines be so clean where they were settled around brown hair like a hat. Large, curious eyes studied Venom, amazement flickering across the face there, and Venom looked back at the little human in interest. Did he have powers? What were the white missiles he was using?
“What the hell is this?” the human asked, blinking in fascination. The LIFE agent on the ground grunted and the young human pulled his mask back down quickly, turning to look down at him. “What is this? Some kind of nanotech? Who do you work for? This isn’t Starktech or anything Oscorp is working on.”
“They aren’t the only players,” the agent muttered.
“They are in New York,” the masked human disagreed, frown obvious in his voice.
“Just don’t open it, SpiderIdiot,” the man growled. “You know, I’ve always-”
“I’m gonna stop you right there, because you’re monologuing to stall for time for your friends to show up.” The newcomer shook his head, waving a hand, and scooped the containment unit up in one arm. Venom felt a small chuckle rise. Eddie never had patience for monologuing bad guys either. Pain lanced through Venom at the thought of Eddie, and he tried to focus on the humans around him. “I’m gonna take this.”
“What?! No! You can’t just-”
The masked human made a sharp motion with one hand and webbing shot away from his wrist, covering the agent’s mouth and cutting off his angry protests. “I told ya. I’m stopping you right there. I gotta get this elsewhere. Bye!” He took a bounding step forward, more webs appearing, these ones flying up and into the air. Venom watched in fascination as they caught the edge of a building, and then the human was yanking up and they were flying, swinging through the air, flipping and soaring, up through the skyscrapers even faster and smoother than Venom could climb.
They stopped atop a pointed skyscraper and the human pushed his mask up again, holding Venom’s containment unit up to the lights of the city to examine him. “Nanotech,” he murmured slowly, frowning a little. “Except it looks organic. Biotech, maybe?” He turned the case, examining the keypad on the side curiously, and squinted at the numbers there. “Two, three, six, and seven were pressed,” he murmured. “So that’s sixteen possible combinations.”
Venom swirled around the unit unhappily. He didn’t know the code. He needed out. If the little human… Eddie had said human offspring were called babies- and there was a pinch of hurt but Eddie has to be okay- if the baby opened it, they could host and he could run back, find Eddie, and it would be okay. He needed to find his Eddie.
And the human who had hurt them, he noted internally, rage flickering back to life. He was still just tied up there. His ‘friends’ were coming and then he’d just be free. Venom wouldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t be free. He’d torn Venom from his Eddie, he had made Venom's human bleed. He wouldn’t start with the head of the man who had hurt them, no. He’d eat the arms and legs, he’d eat slow. He’d eat the head last. Bloodlust made his form spike as he moved a little faster. He needed to get out so he could do it. He would hunt them all down and kill them all for hurting them.
The young human started tapping into the keyboard, buzzing issuing every few seconds after, and then he paused, turning the tube carefully and brushing his thumb against the spatters of Eddie’s blood that were sprinkled across the glass.
“Is this blood?” he murmured, forehead wrinkling as he scraped his thumb across the blood and raised it to his nose. Venom paused in his movement, confused. Humans couldn’t smell things like that from such a small sample size, could they? He couldn’t tell. He and Eddie had matched too well, there had been so few spots where one ended and the other began. The human shook his head, troubled.
“God.” He turned the tube again and continued typing into the keypad. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Beep. The young human brightened when the glass slid back. “Okay, cool! So it isn’t smooth, it looks organic and semi-” he broke off with a shout as Venom shot toward his chest, burrowing down and soaking into the host body, starting the bonding process. “What the fuck-” the child gasped, grabbing at Venom and trying to yank him off, shockingly successful at it for his small muscles. Venom seeped through the gloves instead, soaking into the skin of his hands and arms.
“Shit, shit, no- shit, what-” the kid was gasping, and the world was burning silver-white for a moment, and then everything was tilting and then they were laying on their side, the world pulsing and burning-hot around them.
They could taste panic, sharp and chemical like the fingernail polish remover Anne liked to use, in the back of their mind. The human was gasping in hoarse breaths, shaken and frightened, confused and alarmed and feverish. That was right, Venom remembered suddenly. Eddie had been an unstable host at first, too. The body got weaker before it accepted the bond and settled down again.
Venom burrowed deeper for a moment, wrapping himself around his host’s cerebral cortex, brushing over his mind, sinking into his memories. The child was eighteen, officially a man in human society. His name was Peter Parker. He was intelligent, very much so. He was bright, bright and kind in a way that was almost painful. Memory upon memory of helping strangers, laughing with family, aiding those around him. Eddie, Venom understood suddenly, wasn’t extraordinary in his kindness. This small human was far, far more selfless than Venom’s other, was far, far kinder than Eddie had ever been.
It didn’t mean he was better than Venom’s real host in any way. Eddie was smarter. Selfishness meant that he could escape, survive, fend for himself, fend for them. It meant that Eddie was taken advantage of less, got himself into less trouble for the sake of others who didn’t appreciate him. Venom could find scores of instances in his new host’s mind where this exact thing happened. Eddie made better decisions and didn’t lose any sleep over them. No, if anything, this host’s personality was weaker than Eddie’s for all its goodness and brightness.
“What…” Peter pushed them onto hands and knees unsteadily, finding balance quickly. “What the hell was that?” he breathed, massaging at his chest where Venom had first tried to sink in. It was fascinating. For all this human’s mental weakness… his physical form was different. Venom scanned their new memories, located the answer quickly. He had been bitten by a spider, a tiny harmless bug, and it had changed him. He was stronger than other humans. Much stronger. Faster, too.
A perfect host with which to take his revenge, then. A perfect host to find and reach Eddie again.
“I gotta… I gotta go home.” Venom’s host stumbled to his feet and took unsteady steps toward the edge of the roof.
No. Venom took control, turning them and launching off the building. We punish them and find him, and then you can go home. This was fun, he had to admit; this new body had capabilities that his true host did not. It was amazing. We need you.
His present host screamed in alarm and panic as they plummeted, flailing rapidly and shooting a web up at the edge of the rooftop. He caught them just in time, swinging them up before they could hit the ground and landing on their feet on the nearest rooftop. Venom analyzed the movement, memorizing it so that he could mimic it in the next jump. “What the hell was that?” he panted, stumbling back in horror. “What the hell was that. Holy shit. Holy shit, what if that was like some weaponized LSD shit- oh my god, I need to call Dr. Banner.” He yanked a cellphone from the collar of his suit with shaking hands.
Venom took his hands and threw the cellphone, watching it fall through the air, satisfied. We aren’t done, Peter. Calm down. You aren’t on drugs and we aren’t keeping you for good.
Peter yelped, released too slow to snatch his phone out of the air. “No,” he said, taking a hard step back. “No. I’m not doing this. I’m not doing this. I’m going home. I’m not- I’m going home.” He turned, trying to take a step away.
Venom kept him in place with a sigh. We will eat you if you don’t be good, he chastised. Not long. Punish, then find my human. Then you go home.
“I do not punish anyone,” Peter snarled, fighting against the hold. “I web them up and the police arrest them. You want punishing, you’re looking for Frank Castle. I don’t-”
Venom didn’t have time for this. He took over, manifesting fully and swallowing up the smaller host body. He stretched, then turned and took long, hard steps before jumping off the roof. Even like this, he realized as he caught the next building, he was faster. Everything was heightened for this host and Venom gained the abilities of his host.
He traced their steps back to the parking lot and found two agents cutting the first one free. One of them was laughing. The other was yelling. “You lost it. Do you have any idea how hard it was to find him here in New York, on vacation? And then you lost it. If Spiderman took it, the entire Avengers are going to have it by now. You are so unbelievably dead.”
Venom grinned, moving forward into the light. “You’re already dead,” he informed them, and laughed as they screamed. He leapt up onto the nearest building and then launched himself at one of the ones who wasn’t the Man, the one he’d kill last.
But by the time he was done and had returned to the alley, Eddie was gone.