Down The Line

  Turning over, Eddie reached his hand out to feel the empty side of the bed that should have had Steven on, it was cold painfully so. Eddie knew he should feel hurt of this but in reality Steven wouldn't pull something like this, not in his own flat as well. Eddie leant over to the bedside table to pick up his phone to check the time, and to see if Steven had left him a text. Nothing new, no one had text him apart from a few reminders he set up about deadlines, his heart sank at the lack of response from Steven. Not losing all hope in this, he was laying in Steven's bed for starters. 

  "Maybe you scared him off?" Venom said, Eddie tried to swallow the anxiety building up in his chest. 

  "I think a night of making out with him is the last thing about us that'll scare him off, buddy," Eddie muttered, he was more worried about his own self-destruction scaring Steven off more than the very real alien he is in a symbiotic relationship with. 

  Eddie typed out a message on his phone, trying over and over to put the words together with the help of Venom repeating the parts of it that he wanted to keep. It was silly, he would see Steven on a daily but somehow he would get stumped on how to write a message to him, he was also a journalist, someone who would write for a living, so this shouldn't be hard. Yet it still was, it might always be difficult for him, or it'll get better over time, he wasn't too sure, albeit Eddie was scared to sit around and find out. He was more than happy to. 

Eddie (10:04):

morning you

  Feeling too weird waiting around after he didn't get a response, half an hour later Eddie pulled himself out of Steven's bed and looked around for his jeans and hoodie. It was too cold for him to wait around in the flat, but Eddie wasn't sure if or when Steven would be back, Eddie wanted to see what was going on with his heating. Maybe it was just the dodgy complex, being old and rickety, or it was something else. It didn't help that the feeling Venom was going on about had finally settled in Eddie, the feeling that something was missing, something else was going on in the flat. 

  Dodgy heating is just the lie you tell yourself when you don't want to admit something is off, something is going on that you don't know about. The lie you tell yourself to stay in the nïeity for as long as possible, the little lie you would repeat over and over just to push it all away until you get the answer that you wish you never got. The one time lie for Eddie was that he went from thinking he was going to die from a rare disease, to having and symbiote living, in him with the space of an inhuman amount of processing time.

  Leaning down slightly, Eddie noticed someone had turned it all the way off, as in, the heater was off at the switch. The dust that had settled around, untouched and left alone was disturbed in the same place over and over. Nothing had hit the switch off, nothing was there close enough for it to have hit the switch. Flicking it back on, twisting the knob to turn the heating on to a low setting, it would be enough to heat up the flat but it would take time. Given that Eddie didn't know how long Steven wound be gone for, it felt like the safest option. 

  Eventually making his way out, Eddie borrowed the spare key off Steven to his own flat after forgetting his own in his rush last night. Leaving his own front door open so he could put the spare key back in Steven's flat, it saved any complications in the future and just gave Eddie one less thing to worry about. Falling flat on his back, Eddie let out a deep sigh, trying to push away every single thought that was telling him that he had driven Steven away. Venom nagged at him to get some food pulling him out of the grave he was digging himself (and yes, they were doing that deliberately), but Eddie wanted to shower first, they both had ended up compromising over Venom clearing out his section of the fridge while Eddie finally got showered. 

  "God, do you ever get full?" Eddie snarked, rolling his eyes as he opened his laptop to try and get some work done, but it wasn't going to happen, not while his head was spinning with all the questions in the world. 

  "Not really, no," Venom's voice echoed around his head, they tried to break through the thoughts that were clouding any and all of Eddie's concentration, "Can we please go out tonight?" they whined. 

  "Vee, please, buddy," Eddie groaned into the palms of his hands, he didn't want to go out, in all honesty Eddie wanted to curl up and cringe at himself. He wanted to try and spend the day, reliving last night, and every other second after it so that he can try and find something he had done wrong. Eddie shut his laptop with force, praying that he didn't damage the screen in the process. Standing up from his desk, Eddie made his way over to the fridge to pull out a beer, that he would happily say is better than US beer in every way. 

  Closing the door with a heavy sound bouncing through the empty flat, there was a picture of him and Steven from October. They had been spending some of their days off outside, Eddie was still getting used to London and the area, Steven was happily showing Eddie around even though he had been there for a few months already. They found a restaurant in St. James, they had lost track of time walking around, by the time the sun was going down and the both of them even registered that they were hungry, they came across a pub. After they had eaten, the sun had gone down and it was still warm enough outside to walk around without any urgency. 

  Eddie saw Steven, he looked beautiful under the street lamps, wrapped up in a jumper and coat, that was the night Eddie started denying he had any feelings for Steven., "Fine..." he sighed, "We can go out tonight," Venom made a noise, it was the giddy noise they made when Eddie would agree to buy more chocolate or let them eat a bad guy. Either way, it was enough for Venom to wait quietly until the sun started to set. 

  In between the two going out and when Eddie had gotten back into his flat, Eddie couldn't even attempt to get some work done, he stared blankly at the article he had already started writing. He had drunk enough coffee to send him flying off the walls if he wasn't already drained, the beer he had gotten out earlier was left, neglected on the kitchen side. It took him three hours of not working for it to finally click in his head, he needed to call someone, only having three people on his contracts his willing to call. Anne was most likely asleep or working, as much as she tells him to call her whenever he needs someone to talk to, he wasn't willing to do so. Steven was currently, where ever he was. That left...

  "Alright," Kayla answered after three rings, she sounded as if she was concentrating on something else. Eddie had only known Kayla for a few months, he felt a little off calling her out of nowhere, the think was that they were friends, yet Eddie was uneasy over saying they were this type of friends, "Eddie?" she moved around in the background, "You good?" 

  Eddie ran his hand down his face, "You know what you want something so badly, you get it, and then something happens to make you question everything. Like, everything leading up to it, everything you did during it and just everything you did with it," he rambled, the phone shaking in his grasp even pressed against his ear. 

  "Mate, what you getting at here?" Kayla questioned. 

  Eddie's chest tightened, he wanted to say it in any other way other than actually saying what had happened, "I, um, I might have kissed Steven last night, and then made out with him for the rest of the night... now I don't know where he is," he admitted. 

  "OK, I'm coming over," the chair Kayla must have been sitting on screeched in the background, "just try not to have existential crisis until I get there," she joked, "I'll be a couple minutes. Want me to stay on the phone?" 

  "Nah, it's alright, you don't have to come over, y'know," Eddie muttered, he could feel the regret swallowing his thoughts and everything in between, "Don't wanna waste your time, and all," 

  "Not wasting my time, mate, if you don't then I'll end up in the pub, getting wankered because I hate the people I'm spending the night with," Kayla reassured, in her own way. 

  Eddie let out a weak, little laugh, "Then why go?" 

  Kayla shut the door behind her, locking it as she walked down the hallway, she had grabbed the nearest hoodie and picked up the cleanest bra she had. After being sat on her sofa all day, expecting that nothing was going to happen to her, Kayla wrote herself a quick note to do some washing, since her bra should have been washed two days ago. It was true, Kayla would have ended up at the pub on a random Thursday night, she had been working all day on an article that was a slog to get through. Dave had given her the last proposal on the list, she assumed it was out of spite after she got her last article in late but in edited.

  She kept Eddie on the line, a little longer than he would have wanted her to, Kayla knew that Eddie couldn't spend more the two minutes alone with himself and his thoughts. Pushing the door open to the corner shop, Kayla nodded to Ali who was working at the till. Once she had gotten into the building, Kayla ended the call once she had gotten onto the lift with a plastic bag, with ice cream and beer. 

  "So, no contact?" Kayla asked, spoon reaching for the ice cream. They were about half way through the ice cream tub and had drunk half of the beers Kayla had bought, Eddie was sat on one end of the sofa, looking a little better than he had felt an hour and half of an ice cream tub ago. 

  Eddie picked up his phone from the coffee table, it had been littered with the plastic bag and whatever Eddie was researching at the time, flipping it over and the only thing flashing up was the time, "Nope, nothing," Eddie sighed falling back against the sofa, "Did I fuck up?" he turned his head with a sad look in his eyes, "Do you think I fucked up?" a question Kayla would answer without breathing easily. 

  "No, I don't think you fucked up," she answered, licking the ice cream off the spoon, "The real question so actually be, where the fuck is he?" 

  "Ugh, I don't know," Eddie sighed, exasperated and exhausted, downing the remaining half of the beer. 

  Maybe, he's a super secret spy, Venom supplied him with this thought, this thought being a product of all the government spy films he had been watching while Eddie worked. 

  "Can we talk about something else?" Eddie muttered, he had spent the past hour wallowing in anguish and beer. Kayla shifted around, crossing her legs to tuck back into the ice cream, setting her now empty beer bottle on the floor. 

  Licking off the ice cream, Kayla was expecting this to take a turn on the talking about politics or comparing the UK with the States, "What about?" she asked. 

  Eddie shrugged, "I'm not sure," he said picking up his spoon and taking an amount of ice cream for himself, "you?" he suggested simply, looking at Kayla, something in her face changed. The normal look in her eye had disappeared for a moment, it was missable if someone didn't know Kayla at all. 

  Kayla shifted uncomfortably under the topic changing focus onto her, "Ha ha," she said dryly, "funny joke, mate," biting sarcastically, Kayla placed the spoon in the tub for a moment to toy with her sleeves. The movement didn't go unnoticed, she always wore a large amount of bracelets and hair ties on her one wrist, with a decent amount of tattoos. Most of them were small and impulsive, and possibly from a night out on the lash, she jokes about having a tattoo on her left ribs that she had gotten from losing a drinking game back when she was in Uni. 

  Eddie sat up,"Aw, c'mon, I don't know much about you," knocking on Kayla's knees to draw her attention away from whatever was spiralling around in her mind, Eddie knew everyone had crap that they would rather keep buried away, most of his life back in New York was buried in a box in his mind, that undoubtedly hasn't gone untouched by Venom. 

  "You know enough about me," Kayla retorted. 

  Eddie scoffed, eating the rest of the ice cream off his spoon, "I know where you live, that you hate most people in the world, that you like women and work in journalism," Eddie counted off. 

  Kayla held up her hands out of surrender,"And that's enough," she responded, that amount of information she had told him over the past few months was enough for her to shrug off and move the attention away from herself. "I'm British," Kayla said, "we don't talk about out shit," she commented, Eddie knew that about a few of British people but he didn't think it ran through the a good majority of the country. Eddie looked at Kayla like a lost puppy, "Fine," she sighed out of frustration, "what do you wanna know?"

  "Where did you grow up?" Eddie started simply, not wanting to throw her into the deep end, it was enough to overwhelm anyone with asking them about what their deepest, darkest secrets are. 

  "Sheffield," Kayla said, not paying any attention to Eddie, she couldn't look up at him, because all of a sudden the tub of half eaten ice cream seemed to be more interesting than the conversation at hand, "Next question," she swiftly moved on, trying to end this conversation as soon as it had started. 

  "OK," Eddie nodded, "why did you come to London?" 

  It took a moment for Kayla to think of an answer to the question, she never really told anyone why she had moved, just brushing aside the question and changing the subject to the first think that came to mind, "Wanted to get away from my family, and uni seemed like a good option, and uni in London seemed better then home," 

  "Oh," Eddie felt a pang of regret, he knew that feeling all too well, "why did you wanna leave your family?" Kayla was free to shut down the conversation if she didn't feel comfortable enough. 

  "Shitty family, didn't get along well with them," she stood up from where she was sitting, making her way over the fridge and muttering to Eddie that she was just getting another beer, despite still having three left untouched on the coffee table. Settling back down on the sofa, Kayla grabbed a hold of the bottle opener off the side of the coffee table, Eddie sat unsteady for a moment, expecting her to leave or get mad at him. 

  "Been there," Eddie nodded, raising his bottle in the direction of Kayla in front of him, she laughed lightly at the friendly gesture and returned the movement, "How shitty were they, if you don't mind me asking?" 

  Kayla shook her head as she sipped at her bottle, "Didn't like that I fancied women," she answered, placing the bottle in between her crossed legs in order for her to eat some more ice cream, "and other aspects about me," she tilted her head, "Like my sarcasm and dyslexia, other mental health issues,"

  "Talked to them since you moved?" Eddie asked, taking a sip of his beer.

  "Ha," Kayla deadpanned, "fuck them," she said through a mouthful of ice cream, "I left in the middle of the day while mum and dad were at work, bothers were at school. Left a note saying: 'fuck you cunts, I'm leaving',"

  Eddie laughed as did Kayla, guess she wasn't the only one who joked about trauma to cope with the trauma, "Don't wanna call them?" Eddie questions dumbly.

  Kayla shook her head, "No, not unless..." she took a few seconds to think about a reason she would call her family after all this time, "no can't think of any reason. What about you? Family and shit?" 

  "Yeah, got Anne back in San Francisco," he replied, half arse. 

  "Isn't Anne your ex?" Kayla looked at Eddie with a funny look. 

  "She is, and her fiancee, Dan," Eddie replied simply.

  "I meant like, blood family," Kayla pried. 

  "Ah, well, y'know," Eddie stutters over his words, trying to put a sentence together, "Shitty dad, dead mom, don't wanna call him ever," 

  "Guess we have more in common than I originally thought," 

  Later into the night, the two were still sat on the sofa with a now empty tub of ice cream and the rest of the three bottle of beer were now disregarded on the coffee table, and surrounding floor. The TV was playing in the background, they were watching a re-run of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, both of them were just lounging with weak conversation between the two of them. The sun was slowly going down and it wasn't even seven o'clock, outside it was cold and neither of them were willing to get up off the sofa and sort out some food. 

  "I guess we ought to get some tea," Kayla piped up as the new episode started playing, "I mean, it's like, nearly seven and all we've had is beer and cookie dough ice cream," she kicked the off branded Ben & Jerry's tub. 

  "Yeah, yeah, think that's an idea," he muttered.

  It was about forty minutes later, Eddie answered the door to a Zizzi's delivery, Kayla paid since they were in Eddie's flat, he paid his share of the meal back in cash that he had pulled out of his wallet. Sorting out the state of the flat that the both of them, mainly her, had to blame for. Calling out about where the plates and cutlery were, what cupboard were they in and where she needed to put the plastic bag now filled with the empty bottles and ice cream tub. It took a few solid moments of chaos for Eddie and Kayla to settle down back on the sofa, with the food sprinkled around on the, now cleared, coffee table. 

  Kayla sat on the floor, digging into the calzone she had ordered, Eddie was behind her on the sofa enjoying his own, "You know," she said, placing her head on the sofa, glancing around at Eddie, "don't get me wrong, but I'm glad that you called me. Had more fun tonight that I would've at the pub," Eddie smiled downwards into his plate, he was glad that Kayla had weaselled her way into his life over the past few months, he might be drunk but still not drunk enough to get sappy over the calzone and beer.