Chapter Text
The sound of a car backfiring jerks Eddie Brock halfway out of sleep. He squints his eyes open with a groan, not committed to fully waking up yet, to see that the room is still dim, lit by the alarm clock and the orange glow of the vapor lamps in the parking lot outside bleeding around the edges of the curtains. Not time to get up then, he thinks as he lets his eyes drift back shut.
In his half awake state, it takes Eddie a few minutes to realize that, for once, he wasn’t woken up by a nightmare or kept up by insomnia. Then it takes a few more minutes to become aware of the warm weight of a body pressed against his back, limbs flung over his waist and thighs. Pinning Eddie to the bed in a way that practically forces his eternally tense muscles to relax.
Eddie takes a deep breath against the weight of the person behind him and melts as the pressure of them pushes back against him. The squeeze around his chest almost like a hug or a thundershirt for out-of-work journalists. All of his anxiety gusts out on one big exhale into his pillow.
With his anxiety gone, Eddie becomes very aware of his libido. Heat pooling between his legs as his cock starts to express interest in whomever Eddie managed to coax into bed. A soft touch runs along the back of his next, followed the rough, wet drag of a tongue across the side of this neck.
“Fuck,” Eddie murmurs, his whole body squirming at the feeling. His neck has always been a weak spot and it’s been so long since… anything.
It feels good. Better than good. This is exactly what he was looking for all those nights at the bars.
Fuck, this is nice.
Eddie relaxes further into the mattress. He’s always wanted to be the little spoon and it is fully living up to his expectations. As if in response to this thoughts, the arm across his waist tightens, tugging him closer to whoever is behind him while his cock continues to perk up and his half asleep brain chugs through his memories like the The Little Engine That Could.
Had he brought someone home last night?
There’s a vague memory of a petite, curvy woman in a white sundress but Eddie is pretty sure that hadn’t ended well. Maybe he picked someone else up after that?
A warm hand splays across his abdomen just above the waistband of his boxer briefs, pulling his attention to what is happening, right now, in his bed. Eddie’s cock twitches eagerly, stretching toward his belly, hoping to get attention from whoever is holding him so close. The touch changes, hand flexing and digging into Eddie’s skin and muscle in a way that makes his breath stutter and his body wiggle and almost pulls a whimper out of him. The scrape of claws across his skin sparks a shiver down his spine.
Wait, his brain churns again, trying to catch up to the moment even though his body is more than ready to take charge. Claws?
Eddie dips his head tugging the sheet up so he can look down the length of his body at the arm holding him down. The hand spread wide across his belly is huge and black, the fingers ending in sharp tips. Just like that, Eddie’s brain jolts fully awake, panic fueled adrenaline pouring into every vein.
With a yelp, Eddie throws himself across the bed and over the edge of the mattress, barking his elbow against the edge of his bedside table, and landing hard on his hands and knees. He shoves harder, flipping onto his ass and crab walking away from his bed until the bare skin of his back presses hard against the wall. Goosebumps ripple over his skin from the change in temperature as he looks warily at the few feet between him and his mattress.
Eddie runs a hand over his head, surprised again by the short hairs that prickle against his palm, breaths still puffing out in a panicked tempo. He scratches his fingernails across his scalp missing the longer hair on top that he used to be able to grab into a fist when he was on the verge of panicking. Wishing he could tug on the strands and yank himself out of this nightmare. But the buzz cut is easier to maintain on his own. Going to the barbershop made Venom pissy, they didn’t like it when other people touched Eddie.
Venom.
That thought drags Eddie back to the apartment and back to the bed, the arm draped over him, the big spoon. Shit. The tongue running up the side of his neck. Eddie frantically slaps a hand over the spot where his skin tingles at the echo of it.
“What the fuck, Venom?” He finally grits out.
Eddie fixes his glare on the bed like the owner of the black, claw-tipped hand will peer over the edge at him. But, despite his mad scramble to get away, Eddie knows it’s useless. Venom isn’t on the bed. Venom isn’t anywhere that Eddie can see.
Time to change that.
“Show yourself,” he hisses, eyes still on the bed for lack of a better place to look. “What the fuck was that?”
Silence answers him and no oily black appendage appears over his shoulder in the pre-sunrise dark of his room.
“Venom.” Eddie’s voice is harsh and raspy, partly from being pulled out of his sleep, partly from panic, and partly from arousal. Fuck. Of all the times to get an adrenaline boner. Be real, you had a boner before the adrenaline kicked in. With a hard shake of his head to clear that thought he hisses, “Get the fuck out here.”
The hand that Eddie’s been scrubbing over his buzzcut drops to the side of his neck again, scraping a calloused palm over the place where Venom licked him. It’s not the first time Venom’s tongue has gotten away from them. Or the first time said tongue has slobbered all over Eddie but this felt different. It felt intentional. And this time he’s also half hard. More than half hard.
This is different, right? Or should I just calm down and go back to sleep?
His brain spins over the last few minutes, a dog chasing its tail. The same questions circling and circling as his heart rate and breathing speed up again.
Go back to bed, Eddie.
Eddie’s head snaps up, shooting another glare at the bed. But the voice is all in his head. “No, I will not go back to bed,” he hisses again. “I will not go back to bed. Get out here—”
Eddie. It is late and you need to sleep. Go back to bed.
A stretched rubber band feeling floods his limbs and against his will, Eddie’s body pushes him up off the wall and walks him back toward his bed. The sheets and comforter ruffled. Both pillows very obviously slept on.
Eddie puts his hands out like he can stop his own body’s march back to bed. “Stop. Venom.” His body flops onto the mattress and a black tendril flows out of his chest and tugs the comforter over him. “Venom. Stop. I want to talk.”
A irritated alien sigh gusts across Eddie’s thoughts followed by: Fine. We will talk.
“What the fuck was that?”
His body back under his own control, Eddie shoots up into a sitting position and backs up against the headboard.
Calm down, Eddie.
Of course, that’s the wrong thing to say. Eddie feels incendiary, his heart rabbiting away in his chest and his breaths wheezing out of a tight throat. Shadows start seeping into the edges of his vision.
Shit. I’m panicking. I’m going to pass out.
Eddie is fairly certain he doesn’t say the words aloud but Venom picks up on them anyway. Suddenly, his chest and back are thick with the black tar like substance that makes up his symbiote. It wraps around his sides and over his shoulders like a vest and squeezes. That same even, tight pressure that had him practically fusing to the mattress in boneless pleasure less than thirty minutes ago.
Inhale, Eddie.
And he does. A loud, sharp inhale through his mouth that barely fills his lungs.
Exhale.
And he does.
Over and over, listening to Venom in his head, Eddie’s breaths get deeper and fuller until the black recedes from his vision and his heart has slowed down. He thought he was getting over the nightmares and the insomnia and the panic attacks. Apparently waking up to find himself spooned by an alien is a trigger, though.
As his panic subsides, Eddie starts slapping at his chest and the black goo blanketing it. “Let go. Get off. What the fuck are you doing?”
The tendrils pull back into his body, leaving Eddie looking at the lean, tattooed expanse of his own chest. His breaths aren’t panicky fast anymore but he hasn’t exactly returned to normal yet.
“Venom.” Eddie keeps his jaw tight to make sure the words come out firm and controlled. “I’m trying very hard to be calm here so I need you to tell me what you were doing.”
There’s a slight hesitation in Eddie’s brain. Not quite silence, just the pause before speech. He manages to wait it out, focusing on his breathing and slowing his heart rate until Venom finally speaks.
Helping, Eddie. We are just trying to help you.
“Helping me with what?” The question is louder and faster than Eddie would like so he looks back down at the sheets puddled around his lap and focuses on his breathing again.
You want someone to share your bed with. We can do that.
A sound like a yelp escapes Eddie’s mouth. He thought that he was doing a good job keeping that want from Venom but he clearly isn’t as good at shutting the symbiote out as he had hoped. His hand lifts and rubs over the side of his neck again, fingertips dancing over the place where Venom dragged their tongue. The hand drops like a stone as soon as Eddie realizes what he’s doing.
“We were cuddling,” he says into the air, not quite sure what he’s getting at. “You licked my neck, V.”
Venom’s head finally makes an appearance, stretching over Eddie’s shoulder and out in front of him so they can look Eddie in the eye.
“You felt good when we did that.”
Eddie’s mouth opens at that statement and then snaps closed again. What the hell is he supposed to say? In the minutes before he realized he was being spooned by a sentient mass of black goo, it had felt good. His mind remembers the feeling of his cock waking up and he shivers. It had felt really good.
“We were helping you feel good, Eddie.”
“Okay,” he breathes out in response. In the months since they’ve been on the island, things have been better and Eddie had promised himself he wouldn’t lie anymore. So he tells the truth. “Okay. Yeah. Maybe a little. But you can’t just do that without asking.”
Venom’s head tips, like a dog that doesn’t understand a command. Or a predator deciding whether or not to pounce.
“Just because I want something doesn’t mean I want you to give it to me.” Eddie flinches at that. It sounds so harsh.
“We are the best. Who would be better than us?”
Eddie swallows his laugh, certain the Venom doesn’t realize they are essentially volunteering to help Eddie get off. Although that tongue… He scrubs another hard hand over his scalp and drags it down his face, trying to wipe away that thought. That memory.
“This isn’t like that, V. Sometimes I need other peop—”
“We are people.”
“Other humans,” Eddie finishes on a huff.
“You liked what we were doing. It made you feel good. What is wrong with that?”
Jesus. Eddie scrubs his face again. Sometimes Venom is like a dog with a bone.
“Just—,” he lets out a sigh and falls into silence. What can I even say?
The truth is that Eddie’s dick hasn’t been interested in anything since he messed up his last chance with Anne. First, he was heartbroken and then he was hosting an alien symbiote and then it was saving the planet and apartment destroying fights about eating brains and pitched battles and running from the law.
And now, here, on the island, Eddie feels… safe. He and Venom are getting along better than they ever have. He has a stupid little job where everyone calls him Ned. He eats pizza on the bed in his underwear and watches telenovelas with his alien roommate.
Somewhere in all that, his libido has come roaring back. Weeks worth of days trying to will his morning wood down so Venom doesn’t ask questions. Several nights a week out at bars trying to pick up someone for a little fun that usually ends in Venom scaring them off. Countless times where Eddie has had to lock down his thoughts so Venom doesn’t know just how much he wants.
“Can we just talk about this later?” Eddie finally asks.
Venom’s white eyes narrow as they stare at Eddie but finally they nod. “We will talk about this later, Eddie.”
The sensation of Venom disappearing back into his body is one he’s gotten used to by now, like the twitch of a muscle under his skin. So small that he barely notices it anymore. Eddie lets his gaze fall to where the bedding is still pooled around his hips and is glad that at least this conversation brought his hard-on down.
He flops back down into the bed, curling on his side with an arm propped under his pillow. The orange light from the parking lot draws a rectangle around the shabby maroon curtains Venom insisted on hanging to help Eddie sleep. Before he can stop himself, he rubs his palm over the side of his neck again. The skin somehow still sensitive.
“Fuck,” he mutters into the darkness.
Go to sleep.
Goddamn it. “Fine.”
Eddie pulls the comforter up over his shoulder and tucks it under his chin, closing his eyes and trying not to think about… anything.