Peter was already having a pretty crappy day, and the appearance of a tiny, innocent, obsessed alien certainly did not improve on it in the slightest.
First, he had nearly been late for his morning shift at the grocery store. Three months after the debacle on the Statue of Liberty, since villains from other universe infiltrated his trying to kill him, all because he had to go screw up a spell that was entirely unnecessary in the first place, Peter had managed to find at least three jobs that helped support his monthly rent. One at a local grocery store, the other as a delivery boy at a local pizza place, and the third was more of just a side hobby, tutoring kids from the local middle school.
(But some of those parents were willing to pay a lot for help with their kids’ grades. They never needed to know that he technically had never graduated high school, as many of the parents had seen so much improvement in their kids’ grades that they could have cared less if he had or hadn’t.)
It could be stressful, balancing all that, studying for his GED, and nightly patrols as Spider-Man, but he could make it all work. Besides, he was getting used to running off three hours of sleep a night and at least five cups of coffee before 7 a.m. He hated the stuff, but it was either that or energy drinks, and he couldn’t stand the taste of energy drinks even more than he could stand the taste of coffee. So, he chose the lesser of the two evils.
But, it wasn’t his fault that the night before he had spent patrolling was particularly difficult. Peter had gotten caught attempting to stop a particularly difficult carjacking in which said carjacker had hit him head-on with the giant black Ram 3500. Peter had gotten a great look at the exact brand on the grill as the vehicle had crashed into him. He had been thrown back into wall before crashing into the ground in a heap. The truck had driven off before he had recovered, and he had been forced to chase after it with his whole body aching and screaming with pain. His back in particular hurt the worst.
He managed to stop the carjacking in the end. It had taken a lot of self-restraint to not hit the carjacker with the truck once he had him cornered, but Peter just settled for webbing him to the grill like the stuffed animals in Toy Story 3. That was humiliating enough for the guy.
Peter had been about to call it a night, go back to his apartment to get some sleep before he had to be up at 8 a.m., when he had come subject to a rather violent mugging. That had ended in his stomach getting all sliced up, his suit torn to shreds, before he managed to knock the mugger out with a rough clock to the temple.
Peter had turned back to the woman whose purse he had just saved. “Here, ma’am.” His words were becoming slurry.
She had cautiously taken it and opened her mouth to say something, but Peter had disappeared behind a dumpster to pass out before she could ask anything else.
He had woken to something poking him next to the dumpster the next morning, just as the sun was peeking over the horizon. There was a pigeon poking insistently at his leg.
Peter had let out a shout and jolted, scaring the pigeon off and startling some rats in the dumpster. It had taken him several minutes to peel himself off the cold, hard concrete and find the will to swing back to his apartment (It would have looked rather odd if Spider-Man had just waltzed right through the front doors.). When he had gotten back and checked his phone, he saw it was 5:30. Just two and a half hours until his shift started.
It was at this point that his regenerative healing factor started to kick in, and he felt as though he had taken six Benadryl. He had unceremoniously collapsed on his bed, and the next thing he knew, he remembered nothing.
When he woken again, it was 7:50. It had taken that a moment to register in Peter’s brain before he threw himself off the bed with a rather loud, “SHIT!”, that echoed through the thin walls of his apartment (He would be getting some complaints about that later.). He repeated the word under his breath multiple times and he hurriedly dressed, threw all his stuff into his backpack, and sprinted out the door without another word, shoving past the people milling about the hallways. The next thing that transpired was the fastest race that Peter had ever run in his life, shoving and ducking around people on the streets of Queens as he bolted to his job. He ignored the stoplights at intersections, dodging around and sliding over the hoods of cars to the other sides of the streets.
He arrived at exactly 7:59. Clocked in just as it turned to 8:01, and his boss considered him officially late.
The second thing that happened was that the other two people he was supposed to be working with that day had called out, and there was no one that could take their shifts. So, he would be stocking shelves and dealing with pissed customers all day by himself.
The third thing that happened was the worst. Peter had been restocking an aisle with glass jars of jams and jellies. He had reached back to grab one of the old jars, one that had been sitting there since before he had been hired, when someone else had reached into the shelf at the same time.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she had said. “I’ll just wait.”
His instinct was to pull back, to tell her to go first. She was the customer after all, and the workers were supposed to bend to keep them happy. “No, you’re- “but the words had quickly stopped when he saw her.
It was the same brown hair, styled the same way. The same glasses. The same kind smile that had once greeted Peter every day when he came home from school. From patrol. That had always been there when he had a rough patrol night or a difficult week at school. That had been there after the worst time in his life, after dying and being resurrected five years later only to see Mr. Stark die right in front of him.
She looked exactly like Aunt May.
He must have made some kind of facial expression because hers quickly fell into one of worry and concern. “Are you alright?” she had asked, taking a step toward him.
Peter had taken one back, ready to turn and bolt, only to crash right into another customer. The other woman had dropped the jar of jam she was holding right onto her foot, where it had then shattered upon impact with the floor.
She had been very keen to chew him out for that, yelling about disrespectful teenagers and whatnot, while the woman who looked like Aunt May attempted to calm her down. Peter had stood there numb to every word that left the angry woman’s mouth, heartbeat echoing in his ears, his throat tight.
It was at that moment his boss decided to make an appearance. He had smoothed the whole thing over and made some excuse for Peter to escape (something about him not feeling well and being dazed). Peter had just nodded and briskly walked off back to the breakroom.
There was no one else in there. He found the situation appropriate to curl up in a corner, his knees drawn up to his chest, head tucked down between them. Somewhere to try and get his breathing under control.
His boss found him about thirty minutes later, gave him a glass of water to calm him down. “I’m not going to ask about it,” he had said, which was exactly the thing Peter had feared. Talking about it, about what happened with Aunt May and having the whole world forgetting him, was difficult, as unimaginable as that was. Not that he really had anyone to talk about it with. “But if you need to go home, then I can- “
“No.” Peter had fervently shaken his head, got to his feet. “No, no, I can take care of it.” His boss was already helping the single cashier that had showed up that day. The two of them didn’t need him bailing out on them.
The rest of the day had passed with only two more incidents, both of which involved long scenes of customers chewing him out because of some deal or something they didn’t have or something the customer couldn’t find that was sitting right in front of them. At this point, he should have been numb to it all, but after the incident with the woman who looked like Aunt May, every word that left their mouth felt like another nail in the coffin. One step closer to tears, to just having a breakdown right there in the middle of everything.
The person for the next shift ended up coming in an hour before, so his boss had let a frazzled Peter go early, letting him take one of the sandwiches from the deli (which his boss had paid for). When Peter grabbed his backpack from the breakroom, there had been a small black dot on it. It had looked almost like oil, but far too smooth and shiny to be that.
Peter had only squinted at it, then brushed it off. He didn’t know that wouldn’t be enough to get rid of it.
So, to say that Peter was rather out-of-order when he met with one of his usual kids for tutoring that afternoon was an understatement. He had gotten everything so mixed up that he ended up confusing the kid more than he helped them. He had to restart several of the problems over again, which was becoming increasingly frustrating to the kid, who could not read the mess happening before him and had snapped at him. When his parents had come to pick him up, the kid ad said some rather scathing things about Peter to them.
Middle schoolers were very ungrateful sometimes.
Peter had felt rather pissy when he left from tutoring and decided that if the slightest inconvenience happened, he was just gonna implode. Right there. On the spot.
On top of all this, he was exceedingly tired the whole day. His healing factor was still at work, and if anyone had noticed his stiff movements, they certainly said nothing. The restocking of the shelves had been particularly laborious, and he had winced, a hand flying to his ribs, every time he had to put something on one of the top shelves. Also, he was usually out of it while his body worked on mending itself. Every math problem (What the hell were kids these days even doing in middle school math? Peter didn’t remember his own homework being on that level of difficulty.) looked like a foreign language slapped in front of him. There had been one time during that tutoring session he had forgotten what two plus two was and had to type it in on his calculator, which was made all the more embarrassing by the fact that it was a fancy graphing one.
He didn’t even want to go patrolling that night, despite the fact being Spider-Man was usually his escape. His brain was too fried.
Queens would be fine for one night.
But, of course it wasn’t. After spending the next couple hours stopping a few more carjackings, muggings, and helping senior citizens and little kids find their way to their destinations, he was thoroughly exhausted.
Earlier that day, on his walk from the grocery store to the cafe where he tutored kids (the coffee shop where MJ worked and Ned frequented, but neither of them had been there today), he had found a whole twenty dollar bill just laying there one the ground. Instead of saving it like a responsible person, he --- suited up as Spider-Man --- ducked into a convenience store and bought a pint of chocolate ice cream and a bag of Skittles.
He deserved it.
Also, it gave the convenience store owner a good story to tell his kids that night.
When he had gotten back to his apartment, Peter had chucked the grocery bag onto his twin bed and dropped his backpack by his dresser, which had been situated in front of the bed. It was then that he noticed the black smudge was still there.
He had just shaken his head, scrubbed a hand on his tired face. He would get it off later --- Peter had learned that a combination of hydrogen peroxide, Dawn dish soap, and cold water could get blood off anything. Could it get oil off? Probably not. But he had at least had to try.
But not now.
From there, he had taken the bag of Skittles and tossed it onto the dresser beside the television. It was a cheap, ancient thing shaped like a box --- hefty and chunky --- something had managed to buy from a rummage sale with scrounged up. From there, he had purchased a cheap antenna from Walmart so he could at least get some local channels. He was still saving up enough money to buy a DVD player; streaming service subscriptions were a dream for now. He had then taken his ice cream and plopped down on the end of the twin bed, cross-legged, not even bothering to change out of his suit.
Since he only got the local channels, he was severely limited on what he could watch. There were three that he flipped back and forth between on a regular basis. One was the local news station. One of which showed the classic Star Trek series that he played in the background when he was studying for his GED. The third was CBS. He had become rather fond of the nightly crime dramas during these three months, and even though they were quite formulaic after a while, he quite decided that he could not stop watching them. Some people liked crappy Hallmark movies, and some liked police dramas. No need to shit on people for what they liked.
Still, at least he got some kind of enjoyment out of them. And considering the state of his life right now, that was all he needed.
He watched them all, but he had favorites. NCIS Monday nights, Bull onThursdays, Blue Bloods on Fridays. He had made a point to get back early tonight, as he did every Friday night, to watch Blue Bloods, his favorite of the three.
He was about halfway through the episode and three-fourths through his ice cream when he heard a rustling coming from the Skittles bag.
Peter’s eyes flitted over to the bag for a moment, then did a double-take when he saw it move.
He froze, a spoonful of ice cream halfway to his mouth as the bag rustled again.
The show went to a commercial break, and he muted it as an overly-jolly advertisement for some medication came on. He dropped his spoon back into the ice cream and set the pint down on the floor, cautiously sliding off the bed. Peter kept his steps light as he crossed the distance between the bed and the dresser.
A small squeak echoed from the bag, and Peter jumped. He leaned a bit down closer to it. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that the black smudge on his backpack was gone completely. As though it had never been there in the first place.
The bag moved again, and it looked for a moment like something was punching its way through. Another sharp movement, an angry squeal. A third punch, and an enraged growl.
Like a terrified cat, Peter jumped back onto his bed. He landed in what people had called the “Spider-Man” pose --- his back knee bent, other leg straight out in front, one arm held up behind him defensively, the fingertips of his other hand lightly touching the mattress.
The growl fizzled out into a second angry squeak. The packaging broke apart with a fourth punch, and the horror inside emerged.
Peter felt his jaw drop as he saw what was inside. It was a tiny creature, black and shiny like oil, like the smudge that had been on his backpack. It was about the size of his palm in total. The whole thing was tubby, like a baby or a puppy would be just after birth, with chubby, short arms and legs. It had two huge white eyes, no pupils or irises, in a similar shape to those on Peter’s Spider-Man mask. It opened its tiny mouth to yawn, and Peter saw it was full of small, sharp teeth like a kittens, and its cheeks were packed with Skittles like a hamster.
The creature rubbed his eyes, stared around amazedly at the room. Its eyes landed on Peter.
Its mouth dropped open, all the Skittles falling with it. They bounced off the wood of the dresser and onto the floor. A long, slimy tongue fell out of its mouth.
Peter was rooted to the spot. There wasn’t quite a word for the utter confused he was feeling right now. What-
The-
Hell?
The creature let out an excited squeal and reached its chubby arms out toward Peter. It hurried toward him, a grotesque, yet adorable grin on its face. It stumbled over the Skittles packaging, running for him.
Peter was about to leap onto the ceiling to avoid it when the creature unceremoniously fell face-first onto the floor with a comically loud SPLAT.
Peter drew in a sharp breath. He moved from the Spider-Man pose to peer over the edge of the bed.
The creature stayed still for several moments before its head popped up. It let out a giggle, then pushed itself to its feet and started for Peter again.
“Oh, no, not today, not today- !” The rest of Peter’s words cut out in a terrified shout as he leaped up onto the ceiling, sticking upside down.
The creature looked up at him confused for a moment, then started for the end of the bed. Peter realized it was making a beeline for his ice cream.
He thrust an arm out and webbed it, bringing it up to him. The creature’s white eyes followed its movement, and it stared up at Peter with an open mouth like a child in awe.
“You can have the Skittles.” Peter pointed an accusatory finger at him. “But I’m keeping this.”
The creature didn’t blink. Could it blink?
Wait, why was he asking these questions? There were important things he needed to know.
Starting with what the hell was this?
The next thing he knew, it turned and started for the door, arms outstretched.
“Oh, no, don’t do that.” He quickly webbed the rest of his ice cream to the ceiling and swiftly crawled across it over to the door. He dropped to a squat in front of the creature.
It stopped, staring up at him with wonder in its eyes. At least he imagined that it was, it didn’t have pupils or irises.
Peter dared to reach out and touch it. He poked it in the stomach with one finger.
The creature stumbled back a few steps, giggling. It reached out to grab his finger.
He froze, unable, not wanting to move. The creature’s grip felt cold and slimy.
It opened its mouth real wide and bit him.
Peter let out a shout and shook his head, flinging the creature off. It soared through the air, slammed into the wall, and then splatted down onto the floor. It didn’t move.
Oh my god, I’ve killed it.
Its head popped up a moment later, and it giggled again.
Peter just blinked. What the hell? He had been to space and fought a giant purple alien that wanted to kill half of all life in the universe, was one of the victims, was then brought back, fought a guy with a bunch of drones who was pissed off about his program being name BARF, had villains and versions of himself from other universes infiltrate his own and dealt with magic. Why did this feel like the weirdest thing that had ever happened to him.
Wait… Other versions of himself…
Yeah, I fought an alien made out of… black goo once. The words of Peter-2 came back to him.
“Alien made out of black goo,” he repeated, nodding to himself. The creature had gotten back to his feet and was stumbling back over to him. “Is that what you are?”
It wrapped its arms around his shin --- as much as it could, of course --- then nuzzled its face into him, chirruping contently.
“I’m going to pick you up,” Peter said. “Is that okay?”
The creature looked up to him and made a happy noise.
Peter scooped it up with one hand, standing up. It felt as though he were holding a feather. The creature plopped down in his palm, still staring up at him in awe and wonder. He crossed his apartment and dropped it back on the dresser next to the Skittle back. It made a happy squeak and stumbled its way back over to the candy.
Peter sat on the end of his bed, ran a hand over his head. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his hose with both hands. I fought an alien made out of black goo once. An alien made out of black goo. He let out a disbelieving laugh. Just his luck.
If there was one thing that Peter had learned from his conversations with Peters-2 and -3, it was that there were some things that did not transcend the multiverse. He had fought an alien, but not one out of black goo. Peter-3 had never fought an alien, although he wanted to. Conversely, Peter was sure that the normal side of the villains did not exist in his universe. Norman Osborne, Otto Octavius, Flint Marko, Max Dillon, Curt Conners. He had looked them all up just a few days after the battle and found no record of any of them.
“You don’t exist in my universe,” Peter said, thinking aloud. “At least I don’t think you do.” Any conclusions of his would come with a lot of guesswork. “I- I’m just really hoping that you didn’t come from one of the others.” He wasn’t sure if he would be able to get it back if it did. Doctor Strange didn’t remember him, and he would certainly be entirely confused if some random teenager showed up on his doorstep with this, asking him to send it through the universes. He had already inconvenienced Stephen Strange enough anyway.
He sighed through his nose and opened his eyes. “I really wished I had asked Peter-2 if he had a name for- “
The creature was moving the Skittles around on the dresser in a pattern. Judging by its focus, it was intense work.
Peter slipped off his bed again, stepping over to the dresser. The creature stood back from its work and presented it with open arms. It made a noise that sounded like, “Ta-da!”
The Skittles spelled a word. It took Peter a moment to register what it was.
“Venom?” He looked over to it. “Are- are you Venom?”
The creature bounced up and down a few times, excited squeaks radiating from its throat.
Peter nodded. “Okay… Venom.” He shook his head. “You don’t look like a… Venom.” The creature --- Venom, he guessed he should start calling it --- while grotesque and horrifying, was somewhat cute.
In a grotesque and horrifying way, that was.
Then, he remembered the creature’s bite.
“Yeah, maybe you do,” he said aloud. He looked from the Skittles back to Venom. “What’re you doing here?”
The creature stopped bouncing and stared up at him, before moving to rearrange the Skittles.
Peter held a hand out, stopping him. Venom bumped into it before falling flat on his butt, a confused expression on his face. “That might take too long. Is there any other way you can communicate… ?” His words fizzled out as the creature climbed over his hand and wrapped its arms and legs around his index finger.
Peter held his hand up, and Venom slipped around and down until he was hanging off Peter’s finger like a koala bear on a tree. Despite the fact it weighed as much as a feather, it had a tight grip. It nuzzled into Peter’s skin and made a content squeak. A moment later, it dropped off and landed back on the dresser. It got to its feet and stumbled toward the Skittles once more, this time attempting to eat them again.
Peter let out a breath and took a step back. He was not prepared to deal with this kind of stuff.
He spent the rest of the night herding the tiny Venom away from various places in his apartment. The creature seemed very keen on slipped through the crack underneath the door, and Peter had stuffed his jacket in between the space to keep him (Peter wasn’t sure as what point he decided it was a he, he just somehow knew Venom was) from escaping. He latched his windows tight when Venom tried through there, and ended up barring shut the doors to his closet and bathroom.
He got no sleep. He wouldn’t risk it, not with that thing on the loose.
But, he still had an early shift at the grocery store again. At some point in the night, he retrieved and finished his ice cream. He washed out the interior with water from the sink, then took his pencil and poked holes in the pint’s lid.
At some point, Venom had busied himself with eating the rest of the Skittles. He sat on Peter’s dresser with them piled up in front, taking about five minutes to eat each one.
Peter held the ice cream container just under the edge of the dresser. He reached over to Venom’s Skittles mountain and swept it across the dresser, right off into the container.
Venom stared at him, clearly offended, then stumbled to his feet and ran for the edge of the dresser, arms outstretched. He fell off directly into the ice cream container, into his pile of Skittles.
Peter slammed the holey-lid on top, then swiftly duct-taped it shut. The creature could still breathe, but hopefully, he couldn’t escape. He stowed the ice cream container along with his suit in his backpack before he set off for work.
On his morning commute to the grocery store, he googled as much as he could about the tiny alien, occasionally throwing glances at his backpack to make sure it hadn’t escaped. There was nothing about tiny, black goo aliens on the internet. From that, he deduced that it was as he feared. That it wasn’t from this universe.
Peter was distracted for the rest of the day as he continued his monotonous routine of stocking shelves (At least his other two coworkers had managed to show up today. Actually show up, holy shit.). He had to figure out something to do with the tiny Venom, but where exactly he needed to start, he didn’t know.
There was a time in his life when he could have just taken it to Mr. Stark, and he would have gotten his answer right then and there. Mr. Stark could have then passed it off to someone he knew, and it would no longer be Peter’s problem.
If he had good relations, he could have taken it to Nick Fury. But as the investigator told him all those months ago, Nick Fury was off-world. Whoever had been monitoring him during his school trip to Europe had certainly not been the former director of SHIELD.
If this had been a few months ago, it would have been something that he, Ned, and MJ would have freaked out about. Well, he and Ned would have freaked out, MJ probably would have kept her cool about it. They surely could have figured out something to do with Venom. But without anyone to bounce his ideas off of, Peter did not know what would work and what wouldn’t. There was no one else to throw something in the mix, a new idea, another perspective. Peter was smart, but he didn’t always have the most common sense. The obvious solution could be sitting in front of him, but it would take someone else to point it out.
He could go to Doctor Strange, but he had axed that possibility last night.
Who else did he know around here? There were his former classmates, but… no, he wasn’t going to do that. Too awkward. There was Mr. Murdock, but he wasn’t sure how a really good, blind lawyer could held him with something as extraterrestrial, potentially multiversal as this.
Around the country? The world?
Peter sighed and rested his head against the shelf above the one he was stocking. The only people he knew didn’t know him. They never would.
Wait. Peter’s eyes narrowed. There were other people. Other people who knew him.
Peters-2 and -3. His brothers.
His brothers who were in completely different universes, he realized with a sinking gut. The whole multiverse shtick was really throwing a wrench into any potential ideas that he had.
He wouldn’t be so adamant about taking Venom back where he belonged if he had the ability to take care of him, at least temporarily. Peter had no idea what he was, where he came from, what to do with him. There was no Caring for Your Alien 101 or Caring for Your Rabid, Skittle-Loving Alien for Dummies book in Books-a-Million the last time he checked.
There had to be someone out there who could help him. If this creature was truly from the multiverse, then there had to be some way he could get to it. He could always ask another sorcerer, but he didn’t know another one, aside from… Wong? Was that his name?
But going to Wong possibly meant encountered Doctor Strange again. And Wong probably wasn’t in the New York Sanctum, so…
Maybe there was another way around it without using magic. There had to be some basis in science, some real-life applicable logic to the things Doctor. Strange did. He vaguely remembered Peter-3 mentioning several scientific theories when it came to explaining the presence of the multiverse, all that had been confirmed when he jumped into Peter-1’s universe. There had to be something he could do.
He needed a brilliant scientists for that. One like Mr. Stark. But Mr. Stark was gone.
Wait. Mr. Stark wasn’t the only brilliant scientist out there.
Peter’s head shot up. What if he could-
“Parker!”
His gaze snapped to his right. One of his supervisors was standing down at the end of the aisle. “Are you gonna stock that shelf or stare at it all day?”
Peter swallowed, pursed his lips. “I- uh- I’m sorry, sir.” He quickly went back to his task.
His supervisor just shook his head and muttered something to himself, walking away.
Peter shook himself and went back to his task, sliding boxes of macaroni and cheese to the back. He turned back to the cart, pulling out more.
The boxes fell over like dominoes.
He swore under his breath, reached down to set them back up, and his heart skipped a beat.
Sitting behind them, looking as though he just had an accident, was Venom.
Peter swore under his breath again. The creature made eye-contact with him and stumbled toward him, arms outstretched.
“Shiiiit,” Peter said again. “No, no,” he hissed. “Get back.” He waved to the creature, urging back into the shelf. “Before someone- “
Venom just giggled happily. Peter swore he heard his own name echo in his head in an excited, childlike voice.
“Parker?”
Peter wheeled, back against the shelf. The tiny Venom bumped into his back.
His supervisor stood behind him, eyebrow raised. “What’re you doing?”
“Stocking,” Peter answered swiftly. The tiny Venom made to move around to his right, and Peter placed his arm on the shelf to block him, hoping to appear casual.
His supervisor just blinked. “Okay, well… when you’re done with that, I have other things for you to do.” He gave Peter a concerned look before stepping off again.
Peter waited for several moments until he was sure the man was all the gone. He wheeled and snatched Venom. “How did you get out of the cup?” he hissed.
The creature just slapped his tiny hands against Peter’s thumb.
“I swore I had enough Skittles to keep you in there.”
Venom burped, and the air smelled fruity. Peter heard his own name echo in his head again, the same childlike voice.
Peter sighed and shook his head. “I’m either going crazy or you’re talking to me.”
Peter. The creature made a happy noise. Stay.
Peter gritted his teeth. “Fine, you can stay. But if you get out of my pocket, you won’t like what happens next. I’m finding out what to do with you tonight, and that’ll be the end of this.” He stuffed the creature into the pocket of his work vest. And he made no noise for the rest of the day.
As it turned out, there were several things that got in the way of Peter figuring out what to do with Venom. He had planned on returning home after work, not worrying about patrolling (There were bigger issues he had to deal with.). But crime never slept, never rested, so neither could Peter.
He spent the rest of the afternoon after his shift dealing with more muggings, carjackings, lost kids and elderly. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do with Venom until the creature crawled onto his shoulder and sat there contently while Peter did his work. He let him sit there, the creature the least of his worries in those moments.
Besides, he did manage to terrify a mugger or two with Venom on his shoulder, so he supposed there was some advantage.
But there was something else Venom could do that Peter was entirely not prepared for.
Peter had seen some sleaze-ball of a guy snatch an unassuming kid right of the street and had immediately pursued them. They were not hard to find, as the kid was raising quite a racket as he screamed and struggled against the older man. Peter managed to find them in some dirty back alley.
The man had stopped to scold the kid for what he was doing, threatened to hurt him if the kid continued to make so much noise. Sniffling, the terrified kid had only nodded silently.
The stopping gave Peter enough time to attach a web to the guy’s back, to throw him back away from the kid.
Peter dropped between them and yelled at the kid to run and hide until Peter could deal with the guy. The kid had stared at him for a moment, starstruck by the sight of Spider-Man, before quickly following his instructions.
Peter turned on the kidnapper as the guy dazedly got back to his feet. “Hey,” he said, stepping toward the man with his hands raised, “I don’t know if you know this, but kidnapping is illegal. Like, really. And honestly, I think you’d rather deal with me than this kid’s mother.”
The kidnapper blinked. “Why?”
“Because at least with me, you’ll be in prison, but at least you’ll be alive.”
The man just stared at him for a moment before charging. Which was a stupid decision. Peter was by far the superior fighter.
The man didn’t even get two steps before a giant black void opened behind and swallowed him whole.
Peter stood there, frozen, and his mouth dropped open. Hold on- His eyes flitted down to the street.
The little Venom sat behind. His long, slimy tongue licked his lips, and then he burped.
Peter clapped a hand to his mouth. “Oh, shit,” he whispered. “Oh, shit.” He hurried forward and snatched the little Venom off the ground. He held him upside down and started to shaking. “No, no, no!” He punctuated each word with a shake. “Spit him out! Spit him out!”
The little Venom did not spit the kidnapper out. He just let out a squeak with each shake
Oh my god. Peter dropped to into a squat and placed the little Venom on the ground. Oh my god, he just ate a wholeass man. Peter-2 never mentioned anything like this happening.
Oh my god, he just ate a wholeass man. Peter’s hands clutched as his scalp through his mask. What the hell was he supposed to do now?!
Venom turned back to him and held his arms wide like a little kid wanting to be picked up.
Peter held up a finger. “Are you gonna eat me?”
The childlike voice repeated Peter’s name. Venom bounced on his toes (did he have toes?).
Hesitantly, Peter reached down and picked him up. “I’m trusting you not to eat me.” He deposited him on his shoulder.
Peter found the kid a few minutes later. Although he was shaken up, he did not seem to have witnessed Venom eating a wholeass man in one bite, what in the hell. Peter picked up the kid, who wrapped his arms around Peter’s neck and his legs around his waist, and swung off through the alley, back to the original place he found the kid. His mother was there, and she let out a relieved cry when Peter dropped next to her holding the kid. He passed the kid into his mother’s arms, and she offered him a teary, “Thank you, Spider-Man,” before returning to clutching her child tightly.
“What the hell?” Peter muttered under his breath in his apartment that night. “What the hell was that?!” He wheeled on the tiny Venom, who was busy eating through a second bag of Skittles Peter had bought for him. “You ate a guy!”
The little alien seemed rather unamused with Peter, instead focused on his Skittles.
Peter ran his hands through his hair and collapsed back his bed. He had a tiny, man-eating alien living in his apartment. A tiny, man-eating, interuniversal alien who loved Skittles. Because of course he did. Because weird shit like this always happened to him.
He wasn’t usually one to swear so much, but after running for two days on three hours of sleep, his filter and sanity were at their breaking points. Whatever came out of his mouth would come out of his mouth, and he couldn’t control it.
He sat back up and watched the creature for a minute, contemplating his options. He could let it go, but it wouldn’t be too safe to let this thing free in New York. He could keep it as a pet, but how the hell would he even take care of it? He could kill it, but how?
Also, he wasn’t sure if that was something he could go through with. It was a man-eating, interdimensional alien, but it was also a baby. He couldn’t do something so evil. He couldn’t even kill a man who deserved it.
He needed help with it. That was the conclusion Peter came to. Help would come in the form of Peters-2 and -3, his brothers. But in order to get their help, he needed to cross the universes. He wouldn’t brother Doctor Strange again. But if the multiverse was held down by principles of sciences and logic with magic...
“Nom,” he said aloud. It was the nickname he had just decided on, especially appropriate after the man-eating incident. Nom looked up from his Skittles to Peter. “I think I know I guy.”