[The other, my other. The other part of me, perhaps. The part that will kill me.]
____
Violent nights are not strangers. Eddie is a reluctant participant more often than not, when his hunger doesn’t align with his symbiote’s. When it does… well, he sleeps easier. He usually— which is neither he nor there— does not end up at the hands of a being he cannot name.
That speaks words he cannot hear well or understand. His body pulses at every battered point, beats with the crimson swarming his vision. The restless scratching, chattering of the unknown fills his ears. Voices that sounds like his other.
There is ringing.
Then he is pulled.
It is burning, rubbing his whole body raw past the skin and tendons, the hefty parts of his bones.
He is held in places that he is ripped apart in, forced to ground somewhere while the rest of him is thrown away. A defiant snap of everything he has come to know. The mechanics of it are too simple for him to believe. He almost expects a gigantic, dramatic Pop! when it happens in full. A joint clicking and a shower of blood and fibrous bits. Pieces of himself hanging in tears where it fails to fall apart entirely. To separate.
As it stands, his body is whole— mostly. And he burns from his toes to his eyes and everything after that.
This thing, this man is grinning at him, as if he holds and has more than Eddie ever will. It’s probably true. Clear by now how much he’ll ever have. And what he does have—
His head pounds, but he won’t shut his eyes. Stupid, Eddie? Meeting death with your eyes open, it’d be hilarious. Ha. Will a journalist write that down if they find us— me?
… It’s only his voice and the striking dullness of it. Hell has gone to shit and he’s reaching paralyzed hands at the tar black tendrils going away from him. Again. As Eddie remembers they have, encouraged enough times that it may as well be rehearsed. He reaches fruitlessly for them again. It is worse than any other time. The ground was clear. The moment his symbiote touches it, the ground turns just as dark and swallows the symbiote with its own hundreds of tendrils.
Eddie tilts forward, released with his blood leading his chin to the solid ground. The black mass deserts him skittering back from him and taking up behind their master a few steps in front of him. The distance is taunting. Eddie can’t throw an arm forward no more than he can grind his teeth together to keep from screaming. His other is gone. Impossible to find in the hissing, cackling mass. Hard to find in the red of the stranger’s eyes and body.
—he’s lost that too.
Eddie’s eyes fall shut, he can’t and won’t try to parse if it happened on its own or not. It doesn’t matter when he thinks his luck is bad enough that he might get a kick to the face. He can’t stop the bloody thing behind his tongue.
He opens his mouth.
A scream.
Eddie opens his eyes. He sits up just as fast. The movement startles him. Badly.
He holds out his arms in front of him, feels the flex and stretch of his body. His mouth isn’t pooling with blood, but his face throbs. When he clears his throat it isn’t hoarse.
His pulse is steadying— trying to. The dark of the room is no help, everywhere he looks. But he is in his room. The blanket under him, twisted around his foot that he kicks free and places on the cold floor. He runs a hand over his face, wincing at several bruising injuries.
“Was that you?”
Trying to remember the lay of his own flat is disorienting. A lamp or switch will do. Anything but focusing on the the silence stinging his stomach.
“I did— do not dream, Eddie.” He has had stranger dreams since bonding with the symbiote, so that could be a lie. But… he is glad to hear it. “I share yours.”
A light is flicked on, the little click setting Eddie’s nerves back into place. He can’t decide on getting up or laying back down.
“I meant the scream.” He hates having to address it. He’s heard worse screams. The sound is already fading from his ears.
“We screamed?” Eddie shrugs, deciding to forget about it: attempt to and have to put that away somewhere too.
“Did you see it?”
“Cannot…say. Felt—" The symbiote rumbles, as if trying to clear its own head. Then appearing over Eddie’s shoulder to do just that. “—Not say.”
“..Huh.” Eddie inhales, choking on the air and the thickness at the back of his throat. Each cough rattles his body, creaks the shit that hurts, but he's moving, He must be awake. He sees the symbiote move across the room, hardly hears over the sounds coming from his own throat and too focused on the blood he wipes on his shirt he didn't have much opinion on. He'll have to change. Maybe.
Something cold nudges his arm. He stares suspiciously at the glass of water before taking it. He swallows too much of the water at once, impatience and a lonely, nervous twitch in his body spurring him to ask,
“Are you doing something to me?”
“I amnot.”
Eddie stares into his water. The orangish light reflected in it.
“This time.”
“This time. Must be from before— your… nose.”
The pressure returns when Eddie sniffs. His memory isn’t in place to recall which fight took place with who, and he won’t ask in the case that he is evaded and something was done to him. Helpful or not. The glass is taken and set aside for him. Far enough that tipping it over wouldn’t be a problem in any case.
“That’s considerate. You’re being nice.”
“Always those things.” For better or worse. One of the tendrils reaches for the light.
“Leave it on.” Eddie hurries to say.
“Eddie.”
“You can sleep.” He swings his legs back into bed, but they do not move.
“I do not sleep. If you do not.”
Eddie sighs, watching this time as he succeeds in wrangling the blankets and himself back onto the bed. Laying flat, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, the light stays on. The darkness stays there, behind his eyes when he closes them.
“You are awake.”
it takes a lot to even think, “I am not.”
Eddie pinches his leg, fearing when he shut his eyes he was ripped apart. It hurts just enough, but being torn from his symbiote felt just as real. If he closes his eyes, will his thoughts be his own? Alone?
“Not gone.” Near sing-song. “You are still awake.”
He will not sleep. Maybe not the next night either. His other will want, will hunger. Instinctively and out of something that might be his own doing for not sleeping.. It may not end well for anyone beyond Venom’s tolerance.
It may not end well, sleeping. Not sleeping. Which ever keeps them from being forced apart, out of a laboratory and prodded at… Eddie hopes he chose it.