#i can tag it under both venom (comics) and venom (movie) and neither will be true

[land-of-brains-and-chocolate]

more drafty part of 97!fic i think i am enjoying precisely because no one else on earth will ever want to look at it and even i am not that invested

It happens, inevitably, during their first coffee date. They’re at Rachel’s place, pleasantly chatting about the ways childhood trauma manifests in internal family systems. The radio sitting on the counter plays one witness statement about Carnage after another, ranging from grief-stricken to awed, the media spraying the crowd with the sickening, intoxicating cocktail of revulsion and fascination like a race car driver celebrating a win under a rain of champagne. 

Apart from the time he was rendered into his molecular components in a blaze of white phosphorous, it’s everything Kasady would’ve wanted. It’s a background rumble of unpleasantness, up until one voice rings familiar in Eddy’s ears, though with a different tone than the one that voice used towards him - not outwardly derisive, not depressingly honest, but running along and flapping its arms, trying to rile up a flock of idiots.

“Yes, I did! I faced the monster! I got close enough to stare down those blank, soulless eyes! Smell the sheer, unrelenting hatred of humanity rolling out of its terrible mouth! I’ll go so far as to claim nobody got closer than me and escaped with their life! And it was damn close for a second there!”

“Eddy? Are you okay?”

Eddy sets his cup of coffee down, both hands wrapped around it.

“That… That’s my old boss. Bitterman. On the radio.”

“Oh?” she says.

“Not Carnage! The other one! Yes, there was a second! Let me tell you, one of these things is meaner than the next. But they- They don’t want you to know that! They don’t want you to know that nobody’s got any idea how many more monsters might be running around!”

“Oh,” she says.

Eddy taps his fingers against his cup, eyes fixed on the table.

“I may have dropped him from a third story window.”

“Eddy, for the love of-”

“He had it coming!” he says. He looks into Rachel’s eyes for a moment, sees some mix of fear and disappointment, and averts them again.

“I’m sorry. It’s not like I’ll be doing anything like that again.”

“Don’t sound so disappointed, Eddy,” she says, taking a nervous sip from her cup.

“I know who it was attached to, too. Yes! He was in on it! He needs to be brought in! I don’t care if that thing’s dead or alive, he's still a traitor to humanity! We can’t let someone like that walk around outside, where there’s girl scouts and puppy dogs and tabloid editors!”

“Oh, god,” Eddy says, feeling sick.

Rachel struggles for words, hands hovering away from her cup as if avoiding the whole affair. “That’s- Okay, that’s a problem, but, I mean- Who’d convict you, honestly? With, with an alien in your brain? And now, now that you’re free of it? Even if it’s not the whole truth, there’s no way we can’t just ascribe it to- to something like an extraterrestrially induced psychotic break, if not outright mind control-”

Eddy grinds his teeth. There’s… an unusual edge to them. Something seems to pulsate around the edge of his gums. Rachel’s eyes widen.

“Yes, it’s someone you know! Yes, it’s all connected to Carnage! And since I, luckily for all of you, just so happen to run my own humble little publication, you won’t be spared a single detail of the whole sordid affair! I’m here to deliver exactly what you want to hear! This Wednesday-”

In one movement, Eddy raises a hand, reaches to one side, and sends his arm stretching six feet across the room, effortlessly. His fist shakes with restraint, right above the radio. After a few seconds, he exhales, opens his hand, and daintily hits the off switch. His hand drops to the floor and slowly drags itself back to him, as if on a slack line.

Once it’s there, he buries his face in his hands.

“Eddy,” she says.

He’s busy growling to himself. “The one time that lousy low-life leech gets a story with any amount of truth to it, and we handed it to him.”

“Eddy!” she says.

Eddy realises something.

He looks at his pitch black, clawed hand.

He looks up at Rachel, her face frozen in horror.

He looks back down.

“It’s alive,” he says, more to himself than her.

The darkness rolls up his arm and around his torso, too familiar, now, to still cause him any fear. Eddy stands and stumbles backwards against his chair, falls to the ground, watches it enclose him, chest heaving. As it runs up his neck, he breaks out into a wild, manic grin.

“We’re alive!” Venom bellows. They scramble to their feet, claws across the linoleum making the sound you’d associate with an overexcited dog, and perform something that looks like an attempt to jump into their own arms, landing with a thump that shakes the building. In the distance, dishes break as they roll across the floor, laughing madly.

“Oh no,” Rachel says, one hand in front of her face. “Oh, no. No no no no no.”

Venom looks back at her, mouth twitching.

“No?” 

They crawl up to her until they’re right up in her face, narrowing their eyes dangerously.

“What do you mean, no? We’re a hero!”

“Eddy…”

“You would rather have us dead than in the way?”

“Eddy! Listen to me!”

Rachel grabs their head, reminiscent of a snake of mythological proportions, lined with venomous fangs, and pushes even closer, forehead up against theirs, teeth equally bared.

“The Other’s still with you! You’re going to be asked to court! They’re going to look for it, they’re going to find it, they’re going to take it, and then we’ll be dealing with the whole super-soldier debacle all over again!”

They stare, for a second. Then they relent. The Other recedes from Eddy’s features.

“Sorry,” he says. “It gets- We get offended.”

Rachel recalls the things she’s said about it, not knowing it was listening. She lets go of them, watches them turn away, something alien and vulnerable in their body language.

“I’m… sorry, too. I’m very…” She puts one hand on top of one of their talons, squeezing. “Very grateful for what you did. It’s a good thing you’re alive. Of course it is.” And if she can still see Eddy’s eyes in the Other’s, maybe she can make an effort to see the Other’s eyes in Eddy’s, too.

He huffs. They huff? It huffs?

“Then what’ll this mean for… you know.”

Rachel blinks.

At her silence, they perform a little “you know” shoulder shimmy, point between themselves and her and make a vague noise.

She gives him an unimpressed look. “Now, Eddy?”

“I meant…” Eddy deflates. “...what’ll it mean for the alien accomplice to my crimes and heroics that I am harbouring unbeknownst to the government, of course.” 

“I should hope so.”

Rachel sighs, massaging her temples. Eddy retreats into Venom once again.

“You can’t let them arrest you like this.”

They scratch their chin, grumbling thoughtfully. “No. We’ve been rendered a fugitive. We’ll have to forsake our life in the light and keep to the shadows, with no home to speak of beyond a sense of camaraderie among the most neglected outcasts of society-”

“Why would that be your first idea?”

“It almost sounds romantic, in its own way.”

“You’ve been trying to make it out of the gutter all your life, Eddy. I’m not letting you go like that.”

That seems to catch them off-guard. They twiddle their massive thumbs.

“We were… joking, mostly. Lightening the mood.”

They sit down on the floor, cross-legged. Huge, but tiny. 

“...Thank you.”

Rachel looks down at her coffee, long-since cold. She tries not to think about it.

“Maybe… If you’d separate…”

Venom honest-to-god whines. “Not again...”

“Listen. You’d only separate for however long it takes this to blow over. You go to court, you hope our aliens-made-me-do-it defense holds for all the things you might’ve done, you come home, you take it back, you try to stay low-key. You don’t both have to hide. You can convince them it’s over.”

After a while, they look up at her with their big, milky eyes.

“Where would we go?”

Rachel inhales, long and deep.

She picks up her coffee cup, walks over to the sink and empties it.

“I’m gonna need something stronger than this,” she says.