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“Venom?”
Eddie?
Venom was softer now, all over from his behavior to his voice, content to be removed from the overwhelming chaos of the city. Eddie was too; both of them calmer, safer, but something still weighed on him.
“Why were you going to leave?”
“Eddie?” Venom repeats, confusion giving its voice a low rumble. The familiar wet noise of his extending form gave way to opalescent eyes, angled in questioning.
“After we stopped Carnage. When we said goodbye to Sonny and Cher. You said it was time for you to go alone; why were you going to leave?”
A long silence. Venom’s gaze drifts to the ocean, and though his face is permanently frozen in a macabre grin, it somehow manages to look sad.
“Eddie is safer without me,” Venom rumbled after a moment. And then, through only their mental connection;
And Eddie does not want me. Does not want us. Has never wanted us.
Guilt clawed up Eddie’s throat, shoving memories of those two days alone to the forefront of his mind. They had left him emptier that he’d care to admit; constantly forgetting that for the first time in well over a year he was truly alone.
(Again. Always alone. Always fucking up, chasing people away, never the safe option.)
Venom’s gaze moved back to him, their body eerily still.
“I am not stupid, Eddie. You sent me away. You sent Anne because you needed me to stop Carnage. You said we were a team because you needed me to fight harder. Soon, Eddie will want to be ‘he’ and not ‘we’ again.”
Emotions, though intangible, could be suffocating. Eddie blinked back the sudden onset of pain and couldn’t be entirely certain if it was his turmoil alone, or theirs combined.
“I did,” he croaked, digging his fingers into the sand. “I did send you away. And I’m not gonna lie, sometimes–sometimes being we is hard. Being around someone twenty-four-seven with no break is hard. And I can't promise I won’t get frustrated again, or ask for quiet again one day, but…”
But I love you too.
But we’re meant to be together.
But I’m meant to break things but I don’t want to, and I’m terrified of being alone.
“But I’m trying. I want to try. Sharing a body is hard but its worth it. And I know I’ve been unfair; treating it like my body, not our body, but I want to work on that. I want to find our balance,” he promised, letting himself sink back.
He intended to lay in the sand, to stare up at the sky, but Venom’s cool body pooled behind him like a hammock, cradling him as Venom loomed above, head tipped in quiet sincerity.
“We are not meant to be so lenient with our hosts,” Venom admitted after a moment. “It is standard to take over the body completely. Like a lifeless meatsuit. But even though you are a loser, I like you, Eddie.”
“You love me,” he corrected automatically, an unbidden grin curving his mouth. It healed a wound he’d never fully recognised he had; to be known to be loved once more. Anne loved him, sure, but how was never clear and it didn’t matter anymore anyway. Anne had Dan, and Eddie was a suspected serial killer cum alien experiment on the run.
Being loved by Venom filled a void that had been with Eddie for long he’d been thinking of it as merely his shadow.
“No,” Venom scowled, but it’s protest was feeble, just as it had been half an hour before.
“You love me. Which means… You’ve forgiven me. For being cruel,” he continued slowly. “I’m not sure if I deserve that. Yet. But I’m going to try to.”
Venom didn’t need to blink, but his eyes still scrunched slightly, as if sensing that he wasn’t done.
“I would’ve looked for you, y’know,” he added after a moment, looking away and back out to sea. “Maybe not right away. But I have this horrible of habit of realizing exactly what I’ve lost after I fuck up. And I would’ve tried to fix it.”
He paused. Steeled himself.
“Because I love you too.”
He hadn’t said it back, before. Too distracted, too overwhelmed. But now it felt right. Comfortable. Statement of fact.
A low, considering hum rumbled through Venom, milky eyes following the path of his out to that endless sea. Venom didn’t need to breathe, and Eddie wondered idly if they could walk the ocean floor together, traversing one more world neither of them belonged in.
“I will get better too,” Venom announced after a moment. “Earth is not like my planet. There are rules. Ways Eddie must be kept safe. We know this now. Anne said we must learn to communicate, to have a successful relationship.”
“She did?” Eddie’s brows jumped and he glanced sideways. “When did you two become chat buddies?”
“When she came for us, for Eddie,” Venom hummed. “She told us we were big, and strong. And sexy.”
Eddie choked on air, scrambling for something, anything to say in the face of that.
“She was right!” Venom declared loudly, swinging his head around, leering grin wide and triumphant.
“Carnage was bigger. And stronger. So was Riot,” Eddie mused, and Venom stared at him unblinkingly for a moment before bonking him on the head.
“Ow!”
“Carnage is dead. Riot is dead. Only Venom is left now.”
What began as angered triumph ended as quiet, dawning realisation that carried with it sadness. Eddie leaned back in his sentient hammock, floored by a realisation he hadn’t had time to form before.
Venom was truly and inescapably alone now. He’d had someone like him; someone else of his kind, and he’d been forced to fight them, to consume them, and to become once more the lone symbiote on Earth.
“Do you ever wish you could go home?” Eddie asked quietly.
“I am home,” Venom answered, voice just as soft. “I was outcast, on my planet. Different. Too curious, too soft. I did not want to just consumeconsumeconsume. But now I have Eddie, and two losers make a hero. Eddie is our home.”
“You gotta stop calling me a loser,” Eddie huffed, blinking back a tear he was suspiciously certain Venom had forced forwards.
“Truth hurts,” Venom nodded wisely, grinning toothy and wide at him.
“Yeah, yeah. We’re two losers wanted and on the run, holding hands and sitting in the sunset like Thelma and Louise,” Eddie sighed, batting at the head that settled on his chest.
“We are not women. We cannot be this Thelma and Louise,” Venom grumbled, butting him upside the chin for his stupidity. “We are Venom and Eddie.”
“Not just Venom?” Eddie asked, dancing his fingertips out of the way of curious teeth.
“We are Venom,” the symbiote agreed. “But we are also Eddie. All coins have two sides, two faces. But all coins are one. We are us.”
“I won’t send you away again,” Eddie promised, swallowing the familiar prickle of guilt. “Not if I can help it. And not like that. There might… There might be temporary times. Because its safer, or when I get too old and slow for you. But I won’t make you leave. I won’t not want you.”
“Promise?”
Unusually vulnerable, Venom loomed above him again, staring down wide eyed and hopeful.
“Promise. You’re stuck with me,” Eddie grinned, booping where a nose would be on Venom’s smooth visage. Rows of pointed teeth closed over the air by his finger in warning, but Eddie could feel the warmth of happiness through their connection as strong as the heat from the sun.
They settled, watching the last golden-red rays sinking over the horizon, and then Eddie pursed his lips.
“Do you ever think about how your head is shaped like an egg?”