Chapter Text
Eddie never did well on his own.
Half of him floundered for purpose without someone to care for. It may have bloomed in his younger years when all he wanted to do was help his mom and make her smile. To make single motherhood easier for her in the wake of post-abusive-husband-divorce.
His efforts to please the woman who raised him taught him he was a horrid cook and excellent at chores. The spaghetti may be burned and the sauce too sweet, but the kitchen was immaculate. Mom would joke that they could forgo the plates and just eat off the counter.
When high school began, Eddie also learned he couldn’t do math for shit. Yeah, he could do basics, but ask him what eight of seven was, he’d still need to use the knuckles on his too-big-for-his-height hands to count the pattern. He also learned that his love of reading and writing could be more than just a passing hobby.
The same hands that struggled to count would craft poems and short stories he would pass to his mother. Every one of them would make her eyes dance, and the smile lines on her face soften. Would make the rattle of empty bottles and glass Eddie would bag and toss away in the dumpster on the street white noise.
His sophomore year, Eddie got a part-time job to help his mom make ends meet. Dishwasher at some big-name restaurant that escapes him now.
Maybe that was the blunt force trauma to the head he took one night walking home. The police report said someone stole his shoes and wallet. Eddie remembers befuddlement gnawing through his pounding skull and saying, “Excuse me officer, but I don’t have a wallet. I’m broke. In more ways than one.”
A gag, trying to make light of a stressful situation, referencing his cracked head. The Officer didn’t match Eddie’s crooked grin in the slightest.
Shucks.
After three more identical nights, the last resulting in nothing being taken from him and a busted rib, and more bad jokes at the same Officer, they give Eddie some feasible advice. “Kid, maybe you should start bulking up - grow into those hands of yours so maybe the night will stop trying to tear you to pieces.”
Sophomore year, Eddie joined the weightlifting class in the gym. By senior year, he’s hit his last boost in growth, and his mom is buried with his poetry. Eddie uses his fists for the first time - through his walls, into the television. Neighbors called the police due to the racket, and the Officer who gave Eddie advice two years prior witnessed the dining room chair splinter into the floor.
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The hard part of starting all over from scratch wasn’t job and house hunting. Surprisingly, New York knew little of Eddie Brock- sensationalized investigative reporter, whose record of tumultuous bouts of extraterrestrial terrorism and general law-breaking was scrubbed cleaner than anything he could have achieved.
The Daily Bugle hired him on the spot once they saw his resume, credentials, and references. From what Eddie could tell, it was more of a grandiose version of The National Enquirer with more funding.
And look, Eddie knows he was worth more and had talent leagues than what J. Jonah Jameson could ever need, but this was a start. (“A start to what you dumbass?” He self-deprecates. “We ain’t going anywhere, we’re just here.”)
So was his new shitty, drafty apartment.
“Paying the same amount’a rent as up in San Fran, but a quarter the living space.” He says to an empty room.
He waits for a response that he knows won't come. A quip. A snark. An echo in his heart.
This was the hard part.
The space around him was small, but the void inside was cavernous.
A hunger that food was inadequate to sedate. The first few days Eddie roamed New York and took in her sights, he tried the pizza, the bagels, and coffee. Every bite’s flavor was watered down by desolation.
Off the pier, gazing over the ocean line at Lady Liberty herself, the fissure in Eddie’s mind ached with what-ifs and razor-sharp comments.
“Don’t forget me, Eddie.”
To the statue in place of his heartbeat, he promises, “I’ll never forget you, buddy.”
Staring into his reflection, Eddie’s memory cobbles up to when he wakes up after losing Venom. After feeling the emptiness. What did that old bastard no-name general-type say to him?
There’s a darkness out there you will never understand.
The maw of the void inside of his soul rumbles. “Nah, I understand just well, thanks.” He gravels. He frowns, and grimaces. “Eddie, you shithead, stop talking to yourself.”
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The other half was comprised of the very fact that Eddie did not know how to take care of himself when he was alone.
Waking, washing, and brushing his teeth and hair were all routine. Ingrained him from childhood. But everything else after? The Care and General Well-Being of Eddie Brock did not exist. One could argue that even with Mom, Eddie’s needs were woefully ever met.
Forgetting to eat, forgetting the time, the days. Blurred together in the fog that fussed up his brain.
In the wake of mom’s nose dive from living off her alcoholic marathon, Eddie ended up living in a car. It was broken down, useless, and in a garbage lot. Eddie couldn’t remember the hide or hair of how he ended up there but surmised he was right where he belonged.
That’s what depression did to him often. It ate at his working memory and sense of self. Though he did not yet know that was what his mind was batting from one breath to the next. That diagnosis came after the Officer who always found him shook him from the trash heap and into a financial aid office. (Well, first a shower and a decent plate of food.)
From Officer to Academic Counselor, Eddie freed himself momentarily to sign up for any and every writing, journalism, and literature class he could.
Eddie gained a new routine. Classes in the morning, peanut butter sandwiches and poetry for lunch, and night work as a bouncer for any bar and club that would source his bulk. Lift weights and read and dissect classic lit on his off time.
Half a degree in, Eddie meets Anne.
Eddie would be the first to confess that he fell in love long before she even knew he existed. At a bar he was hired to cover for the night, a handy drunk was grabbing on the pretty blonde. Rather than Eddie being the one to throw the man out, Anne broke the drunk’s nose on the bartop.
The women cursed more than a sailor would ever dare while leaving the bar, and Eddie blushed the rest of his shift.
The next, Eddie was holding her hair back while she emptied the contents of her stomach into the campus library’s trash bin.
It was pure coincidence, had to be. Eddie noticed her a table over, hunched over a text. He still thought she was the prettiest woman he had ever laid eyes on. He chewed his pen, trying to convince the deprecating side of his brain to let him go and say hello to her.
Instead, he sees her fly from her seat, chair sideways from her departure, and. Oh.
Oh dear.
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“Who the fuck are you?” Anne demands, looking pale and obviously fighting some kind of bug, and still as if she is two breaths away from biting Eddie’s hand off.
Eddie doesn’t know what that says about him and this alone makes his ears tingle.
“Uh, Eddie.” That is about all he could say, half a literature degree be damned.
The blonde looks up at him, looking all sorts of unimpressed (which, fair) and ill and defiant as if the man didn’t just help hold her hair back from her bought of sick. “Well, Uh Eddie, thanks I guess. Now let's pretend this never happened.”
Anne straightens herself, she sways, and Eddie holds her shoulders steady as lightly as he can. “Okay.” He agrees while doing the exact opposite of her request. “Do you, uh, need help or uh?”
“NO.” Anne snaps, library be damned. Eddie’s neck begins to prickle with the realization that they probably gained a small audience of collegiate waifs studying for finals. “I don’t need help, I need to-” She swats his hands away. “I need to finish my goddamned thesis.”
“I-oh. Okay. Alright.” Eddie scrambles to right her fallen chair and assists her to push forward once she sits.
An hour and three ginger ales bought from the student store later, Anne’s sick and tired fingers pressed submit for her thesis.
And promptly passes the fuck out.
Eddie’s cobalt eyes grow wide with panic.
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Spider-Man catches a car mid-air just a few feet from him, and Eddie can’t help but think how fucking surreal of an experience it is.
It wasn’t too long ago that Eddie was exposed to life of superhuman shenanigans via Symbiote. Considering, as far as he recollected, California was lacking in the meta-human, superhero, evil villain quota compared to New York.
Just last week, Eddie reported on a duo in red and yellow gimp suits slaughtering a league of human traffickers. Yesterday some scientists willingly (willingly!!!!) got themselves sucked into some outer-dimensional bullshit only to be coughed up with superpowers right off of Madison Avenue.
J. Jonah hates all of them of course. The office was fun since, watching the vein in his forehead pulse as all of the conspiracies and negative press he was spitting.
Also because Eddie refused to type said convoluted articles and instead focused on how Gimp Suits saved dozens if not hundreds of enhanced children and how Madison Avenue has been revolutionizing the medical and aerospace fields - creating widespread jobs in its wake prior to dimensional regurgitation.
Because Eddie is a great reporter. For both articles, he was hailed as the only one who received interviews from those affected by both incidents, when no one else was budging, as well as statistics and research.
This afternoon’s surreal experience came with a spider-themed vigilante versus a man who decided he really wanted to be a rhino.
Spider-Man takes care to place the car down as swiftly as he can before lobbing a ball of webbing at the Rhino’s head to distract him.
Probably.
Or Spider-Man is just being a dick.
Eddie isn’t much of a tactician.
Upon seeing that, oh shit, there’s a person still in the car that was just flowing into the air, Eddie runs against the tide of people fleeing to wretch the door open and help the driver out. An absolute grandma if Eddie has ever seen one, poor thing shaking like a leaf.
Bundling up his acquired precious cargo, Eddie high-tails it away from the car at the same instance Spider-Man is thrown into it.
Ouch.
Eddie’s been there. He knows the hurt that kind of fall could bring.
Post-Venom life has brought about a new awareness Eddie didn’t always have prior. Before, he was always a willing helper, sure. But anything dangerous, and he would feel his feet stonewall. Nowadays, Eddie finds himself sauntering into danger with nary a blink (maybe several winces) and a stunning ability to time his bullshit. It was almost like the most animal part of his brain that could sus out danger was brought to the forefront.
Though, he was wise enough to leave the heroics to someone who could catch flying cars. Or punch a Rhino-sized man.
After handing off the elderly woman to the police who have arrived at the scene - to do what, Eddie doesn’t know. He very much doubts that any one of them could do much in the current situation.
Several had their guns aimed at Rhino and Spider-Man, and Eddie’s nose flared along with a burning in his veins, because what the actual hell?
“Hey!” He gestured wildly to gain attention. “Are YOU gonna try and shoot the only guy who can handle a five-thousand-pound Rhino? Because I Googled that shit.”
He waved his phone’s Google search in their faces as proof. Because, yeah, one wonders just how much the rampaging animal man weighed in all the chaos.
Some officers faltered their weapons, and yeah, that’s what Eddie fucking thought.
Spider-Man somehow was able to subdue the man dubbed The Rhino (so very unique and original my guy - not) by using his own momentum and weight against him.
The spider-themes hero stood a top of a slightly bent lamp post, looking down at the befallen villain, arms akimbo.
“How do you even arrest a guy like this?” Eddie asks from below. Spider-Man’s masked eyes slowly blinked in his direction, shoulders sagging. “I don’t know.”
Yeah, fair.
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Eddie is pretty fucking sure his neighbor is Spider-Man. And Spider-Man also works at The Daily Bugle, selling off actual goddamn pictures of himself. And, okay, the guy also sells any picture to the station that can be used for an article - he’s got good talent.
Eddie is also pretty fucking sure, at one time, everybody and their hamster knew that Spider-Man was his neighbor. Or, well, knew it was him, his face and name.
Which is Peter Parker.
And either all of New York is in on this big fat secret and not saying anything out of respect for the dude (which Eddie full-on doubts - Rhino business notwithstanding). Or. Or somehow said hamsters and said everybody somehow forgot.
All but Eddie Brock anyway.
Or his own flavor of depression was dancing around his brain again, mucking up his thoughts.
Yikes.
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Anne would say that she loves his hands.
“They’re so big, and strong. But you hold and touch everything too gently. That’s who you are Eddie - strong and gentle.”
Because Eddie did not have any fragment of an idea where Anne lived, he had carried her to his dinky, cheap apartment at the time, set her bag on the table, took off her shoes, and tucked her into his bed.
Then promptly panicked again, because-
“Eddie you dumbfuck, she’s going to think you kidnapped her.” He pulled on his hair with one hand and grabbed his keys with the other. “Did I kidnap her? Jesus Christ on a stick.”
And spent the next two hours Anne was asleep in his bed, crouched in the apartment complex’s hallway.
Anne awoke, less sick than before, and shrieked.
After much shouting, and reassuring from the doorway of his own home, with a shoe aimed at his head, that there was nothing afoot-
“Are you seriously making jokes right now?”
“Sorry, sorry. It’s a habit.”
“I’m going to break all your fucking habits I swear to god-”
“Well, I have a lot so good luck, I’ll be cheering for you?”
The shoe really did get lobbed at his head then.
From strangers to somewhat friends, to actual friends, Eddie Brock fell head first in love with Anne Weying. Learning she was studying law, and in turn, endeared him to investigative journalism.
He never understood what she saw in him when she allowed herself to fall for him too. He wished he could see what she saw - but was so, so grateful for her love all the same.
Anne was the first person to say, “Eddie, let someone else take care of you for a change.”
And, that was the thing, wasn’t it?
Anne wanted to support Eddie, but there was always a small nigging doubt in the back of his mind. He was afraid that like his mother to him all those years ago, he was becoming to Anne.
He would bury it down, and cloud it over with accomplishments of journalism, getting his own show - The Eddie Brock Report! How awesome is that Anne, look at me!
Despite it all, Eddie was too frightened to show Anne his darkest pieces. The parts in his mind that broadcast his inadequacies, and hold fast around his throat.
Maybe, Life Foundation or not, Venom or not, they were never truly going to work out.
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Eddie never really chalked himself up to being the heroic good guy. He was so far removed from the hero scene that anything Venom and he did equated to pennies in comparison.
He liked to help good people. He enjoyed seeing assholes eat shit and the empires they create from harming good people crumble.
He’s also very nosey and not above snooping and sleuthing into other people’s business to stave his curiosity (and hopefully help someone with said nosey business).
So, did he have an ethical dilemma upon using his investigative journalist skills to look up anything he could on Peter Parker?
Nope.
Nada.
Zilch.
Because there was absolutely fucking nothing on the guy.
“Can’t feel guilty if you can’t find anything to be guilty about huh Bud?” He commented out of habit, hoping but not expecting a response back. The pen cap he had been gnawing on welting.
He looked up (hacked) apartment records, to find past addresses, nothing.
Well, it was there, but it was as if his eyes refused to see it. His brain was telling him he was looking at an address, at any information on the screen he could gather up, but it was not reading it.
“What kind of mind fuckery is this?” He chews out.
Eddie knows he’s a little sideways in the mental health department, but never has that ever clouded his judgment when working on a case.
Self-imposed cases especially.
Taking Parker’s photo from his identification - and hell, the kid doesn’t even have a driver's license. Just a basic government-issued ID. Eddie found pictures of his neighbor from a city high school - Midtown School of Science and Technology.
“Holy geez, we got a nerd here folks,” Eddie mumbled to the quiet and took notes. Maybe he used his smarts to block his identity somehow? But why?
Further down the (very small) rabbit hole of vague and blurred information with there-but-not-there photos of Peter Parker, did Eddie Brock end up on the official Stark Industries webpage. Specifically for the internship program.
Eddie spits out the pen cap. “Well, how about that.” Smack dab in the center of the page, where pictures of interns working in Stark Labs are showcased to entice future applicants, was Peter Parker.
When trying to enlarge the image proves futile, with 404 Errors and all, Eddie can only screen capture the minimized version in the cluster of the others, and save it.
Eddie leans back in his chair, arm over his eyes, frowning. “Guy’s obviously gotta be smart as hell. And he’s Spider-Man. Why’s he living him a shitty apartment working for the Bugle of all places, huh?”
Peter looked exhausted on his best days. Smile reedy and like he’s one breath away from crumbling on himself at his worst. Eddie can’t help but notice the telltale signs of the kid being stuck in isolation.
He was just a damn kid too. Peter was what, 18 from what the date on his license says. And according to New York at large, Spider-Man has been walking old ladies across the street and stopping bank robbers for, at most, four years now.
The void within in sings, and the place where his heart once was ached. “Goddamnit.” Unable to stay still any longer, Eddie removes himself from his chair, grabs his keys, and leaves.
Are we going to fight some bad people Eddie?
“Not tonight Buddy,” Eddie answers the voice that really should not be there. “We’re going to help a good person instead.”
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It was almost midnight when Peter crawled into his shabby apartment from the window and shucked off his mask.
Two breaths in, there was a knocking at his door that caused every hair on his body to jump. Scrambling to get out of his suit kicking it under his bed and shaving into ratty old sweats and a shirt, Peter used the peephole. “Who the heck?”
The knocking started up again.
Peter’s eyebrows went into his hairline at seeing his new neighbor at his door. At midnight. He also knew his neighbor was the new journalist at The Bugle. Eddie was a nice enough guy, a bit shy and often spicy to Jonah’s so he quickly became an office favorite.
Regardless, Peter opened his door only a fraction. “Yeah? Can I help you?”
Eddie looked somewhat pleased that he had opened the door and waved his free hand slightly, lifting the other with a bag of takeout. “Hey, man! I can’t cook to save my life, so I ordered takeout and got way too much. Thought you’d might want it?”
“At midnight?” Peter was incredulous, but opened the door wider, to stand fully in the entrance. His senses told him there was nothing to be concerned about.
The older man shrugged. “I was hungry. So, here you go.” Forgoing asking again, Eddie handed the bag to Peter and let the plastic handles go, forcing Peter to catch it out of reflex, lest its contents crash to the floor.
“See you, dude, good night!” Taking the three steps across the hall it took to his apartment, Eddie waved.
Peter looked from the bag of food, Chinese by the smell of it - there are only a few family-owned places that stay open this late in New York - and at his neighbor’s closed door. His stomach wasn’t complaining, but still.
“At midnight??”
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Eddie leaned against his door once inside and listened for the closing of his neighbors before trudging his way deeper inside.
Eddie grunts, falling face-first into his bed. What was it that one Roman poet said? “Absence makes the heart grow fonder?”
Well, if fondness was an echoing loneliness, then sure. It’s growing right.
You did good Eddie. Says the darkness, that wasn’t there.
“I’m going to try Buddy. I think it’s the only way I can make it otherwise.”
He rolls himself into his bedcovers, cocooned, and he mumbles to the voice, “The poet's name was Sextus by the way.”
If Venom were there, Eddie knows he would have gaffed and cackled.
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Humans say “A cockroach can survive a nuclear explosion.” Well, bitch, a cockroach can barely survive a Symbiote.
Venom hisses and forces himself to dive into a centipede this time. He is sure there is a trail of dying and dead roaches before he comes across the new insect host.
Oh well, Venom resigns. He’ll use worms if he has to.
But why the fuck did New York have to be so far away?