5 times people almost met venom + 1 time they did
Venom is an interesting “friend” to have.
Pros:
Venom is safe. If you’re Venom’s host, you’ll never die if he can help it. Eddie has tested that one personally a few more times than he’d really like. As a being so physically intertwined with you, Venom has an economic, as well as emotional, attachment to keeping you alive and as unharmed as possible. Eddie counts this as a bonus for work.
Venom is comfortable. Not only is he the ultimate swaddling, inky shield when he is around you, but he’s just, in general, as a being physically intertwined with you, comfortable. He is, and these are Eddie’s personal words that he shares with nobody else, a soothing, grounding presence in the veins. It’s like someone did to your veins what that one company did to blankets by filling them with whatever is inside weighted blankets. Eddie would feel like a crack addict in the snow if someone removed Venom from his body now. He’s happier with his symbiote, like any other organ, inside his body (or encapsulating him), thank you very much.
Venom is trustworthy. As a being physically intertwined with you, Venom is never surprised, disgusted, confused, or affronted by your thoughts because he hears them. When Eddie talks aloud nowadays, it’s more for clarity for himself– he usually does this when they’re arguing and their discordant energies just don’t mesh in the mental plain, or when he’s been thinking too much and just needs to make sure he can talk. Eddie never needs to worry about Venom losing his train of thought when his words lose meaning after hours of writing and warping verbs and sculpting adjectives because Venom has been there for every step of the mental process to get to the point. They’re just compatible.
Cons:
Venom is not a great person to introduce to friends on a first meeting. Unless someone (and there have been one or two someones) asks “Hey, do you happen to have a giant, toothy, kind of sticky and wet being from another planet living inside your body?” this sort of thing just doesn’t come up, and Venom has, by now, accepted this and settles for making pointed comments about “new” people while Eddie has the relevant conversations and tries not to laugh at what Venom is saying.
1
Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanov were another couple of people he just never expected to see in San Fran– it really just didn’t seem like their vibe, to be honest. Lots of hipsters, lots of homeless people, lots of the eccentric normalcy that heroes like them, heroes with lesser known identities, didn’t want to be bothered with. As it was, Brock only knew about them because he’d done more research than he should on the invasion in New York, for Venom’s sake. Natasha Romanov was an assassin with so much buried info, even Eddie couldn’t get into all of it, just te surface level, recent stuff in New York, and a tie to a secret government organization with an impossibly long name. Bruce Banner was a reclusive scientist, and his only redacted files were he ones relating to a lab accident some years ago and the circumstances o his relocation from New York to wherever the fuck. Technically speaking? They weren’t in New York, the only name-dropped heroes were the big ones: Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, and, if you look through enough reddit, some dude with a bow and arrow. Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanov were not in New York, according to news outlets and the US government.
But now, for both of them, San Francisco.
“We should meet them,” Venom purrs, excited, “and by we, I mean you make a good first impression and I greet them when they’re less likely to panic.” He’s getting better at this, they are getting better at this, cohabitating without scaring the shit out of people. Venom is learning he’s not the best ice breaker, and he’s too level-headed for that to hurt his feelings. He knows, after several therapy sessions, that the issue isn’t who he is, or even what he is, it’s that people are not expecting someone like him, and because he defies the basic laws of biology, it’s easy for people to be afraid of him on first meeting. So, Venom knows not to take it personal, and Eddie knows that Venom is more of a second-meeting introduction (if not tenth).
For once, Eddie agrees. He’s got too many questions about what, exactly, the fuck happened in New York– there’s too many black bars in those documents for it to have been a military training excercise or any earthy foreign army.
He approaches them cautiously before stepping in front of their path as Romanov makes small talk and Banner looks distinctly uncomfortable about the amount of people around.
“H-hey there,” Eddie greets casually, Natasha takes a defensive step in front of Bruce, which is very interesting and Venom thinks it means they’re fucking while Eddie, without discounting that theory, thinks both of them (mostly Banner) are hiding something.
“Hi,” Romanov smiles prettily, and if Eddie was a shittier journalist he would have missed the threat behind her shiny teeth, “need something?”
“Uhhh, kinda? More curiosity than anything–”
“Oh, great,” Banner moans, “the last thing we need is curiosity from the locals.”
“I’m Eddie Brock, and we’re– uhhh, nevermind. I’m Eddie Brock, and I just had a few questions about New York.”
“H-he shouldn’t know anything about New York,” Banner mutters anxiously, wringing his hands.
“You shouldn’t know that we were even in New York,” Romanov snaps, accusatory and daunting.
Eddie swallows nervously, taking reassurance from Venom’s presence in his veins. “Uhmmm, let’s say I’m curious and I do too much digging for my own good– look, I’m not asking about anything personal, I just wanna know about the aliens: what did they look like?”
“Ugly,” Banner coughs, “why?”
Knowing full well that he was testing his luck, Eddie coaxes, “They didn’t happen to be, uhhh, big, sorta grayscale, kinda liquidy– maybe sensitive to fire and certain noises? Did they happen to fit any of those descriptors?”
Banner’s eyes were squinting like he’d be able to see what the fuck Eddie was talking about better if he squinted. Romanov folded her arms and regarded him carefully, “No, they did not fit any of those descriptors. They were human-sized with an exoskeleton.”
“Thank fuck.”
“What?”
“What? I didn’t say nothin.”
Giving Banner a look, Romanov approached Eddie and Venom tentatively. Venom chastised Eddie for blowing their cover to a woman who had already seen an alien before. “Mr. Brock, would you like to come with us for–”
“No,” Venom screeched, through Eddie’s voice. And Eddie apologized for taking up their time and all but fled into the crowds of San Francisco.
They had scared Venom, bad. Venom remembered what happened when people took an academic interest in you, there were labs and tests and hosts and deaths and Venom didn’t want them to die.
“V, it’s alright, calm down. They’re not gonna take you, or me, or us. We’re never even gonna see those guys again. It’s okay, V, it’s okay.”
2
Loki is an absolute character. They know his face well, since doing a bit more digging than they should have on redacted files concerning the alien invasion in New York. And Venom’s vote, for the record, was to bite his head off, but the man was just touring the sites with an aging man he called “Father,” so Eddie said “no, wait, let’s see what he’s up to.”
And they followed him for hours. He showed his dad the crazy streets and eccentric houses of San Francisco, they poked at “human trinkets” in the gift shops on the pier. They ate dinner at a cute little diner on the edges of the city.
But then, maybe Venom and Eddie are a little too nosy, maybe a little less careful than they should have been when messing with other aliens, because Loki and “Father” take a turn into an alleyway and have Eddie cornered the moment he follows suit.
“I’ll eat them!” Venom screeches.
“No, no, let them be aggressive first, I don’t think they’re hostile,” Eddie insists nonverbally.
Venom still writhes and trembles with rage in Eddie’s veins. “They’re almost, gods, V, let’s not piss ‘em off if we don’t gotta.”
“Father” seems reluctantly ready for a fight. Loki narrows his eyes. “What are you?”
“I’m, uh, I’m an Eddie Brock, my name’s journalist.” Shit. Venom is confident enough to laugh.
“Loki, manners, we’re not killing people on my birthday,” “Father” insists. “I’m Odin, I’m just a feeble old man enjoying a day with my son.”
Loki frowns. He almost looks like he’s going to push it, but then he catches sight of his reflection in an oily puddle and thinks better of it. Everyone’s got secrets.
Venom insists Eddie at least try to eat them– he’s never tasted other aliens before.
But Eddie just mumbles something derisive that sounds suspiciously like a threat to “stay out of the goddamned news or I’ll make sure you get a front-page story” and stumbles on home like a drunk man trying to find an ex. Venom thinks this whole thing is hilarious, even if Eddie needs a minute to warm up to that train of thought.
3
So. Peter Parker.
First of all, the kid is, like, twelve, so why is he discreetly lifting up that trolley like it weighs nothing for an old man to retrieve some lost item? The old man is blind as a goddamned bat, and probably partially senile, and resolutely, possibly intentionally, does not notice the abnormality of this as he eventually retrieves a miraculously unharmed pair of glasses. Peter Parker, Brock’s part-time photography intern for spring break, runs back with a goofy smile and a “Sorry, Mr. Brock, I got sidetracked on the way here,” like the “sidetrack” wasn’t lifting a fucking trolley fifteen feet away from the coffee shop.
Second, the kid is just off. Apparently, he’s from New York, but he does not yet seem relieved by the lack of unnatural disasters in the Bay Area, he seems twitchy. He’ll hear a baby scream too loud a block away– something Eddie can only hear with Venom’s help– and he’ll go to stand up before he catches himself and asks Eddie to continue talking about the repression of the goddamn industrial hemp industry as related to the major paper companies in the ‘80s or whatever the fuck. Like Eddie misses the way the kid is clearly too smart for his own good, senses are too sharp to be normal, reflexes are just stupid fast, and now the kid is lifting trollies like it’s no big deal.
Eddie knows something about normal and not normal, and that ain’t it.
Venom, of course, would like to make a grand entrance, introduce himself, ask the kid where his weird habits come from, and possibly adopt him.
Eddie says, okay, your thoughts are heard (therapy talk. Eddie has a very good therapist now that he’s got two people all up in there in his brain juices), but research first.
So, after day two of Peter Parker’s internship, Eddie looks up “weird occurrences in New York,” which he should have known was dumb. Venom asks if he’s kidding. No, he’s not kidding, just tired. So Queens, “weird stuff in Queens.” Still not getting the right stuff. He tries “Queens heroes,” and there’s probably where he should have started. Iron Man, that’s Tony Stark– Peter never shuts up about him, that’s his hero, and Eddie feels kinda inclined to agree, the man has everything (“except a life,” Venom hisses, half sardonic, half sympathetic). All the Avengers, yeah, yeah, Venom knows those guys. “New Queens heroes” there we go.
Spider-Man. Yeah, never heard of a Spider-Man. The costume looks like a onesie with fabric marker designs made by a toddler, so that about fits the bill for a Sophomore in high school trying to be a hero. He looks at sightings, and the earliest ones center around Peter’s school, but as time goes on they branch out. He took out bank robbers on 5th, two months ago. A mugger near the movie theater, three weeks ago. A serial rapist, last week. Jesus, the kid’s got high school APIB classes or whatever the fuck and he’s doing this shit? No wonder Venom can tell he hasn’t had a good night of sleep in a while.
Yeah, no. Not on Eddie’s fucking watch (or Venom’s. Venom has been trying to get Eddie to this conclusion since Peter showed up with a hand-me-down camera and muscle tone indicative of rapid growth and consistent use).
“We are adopting him!” Venom grins.
“No, he’s got an aunt.”
“She’ll barely know he’s gone.”
“Venom, babe, she’d definitely notice if her son didn’t come back from the other side of the country.”
“But we’re taking care of him?”
“For a week, yeah. We aren’t even sure this is him, yet.”
“Well, do your “investigative journalism” thing and find out, then!” Venom cries, excited. He loves when Eddie does his “investigative journalism” thing because it makes Eddie happy, and also floods their brain with those delicious chemicals that Eddie keeps reminding him the name of.
“Dopamine, it floods our brain with dope-a-meen. And I’m not gonna grill the kid, V.”
Ignoring Eddie’s vocabulary lesson, Venom hums underneath the skin. “What’s our plan, Eddie?”
“Let’s give this kid one normal internship week,” Eddie proposes. Venom knew as soon as he asked that would be the plan.
So Peter Parker shows up the next day, looking tired as always, still smiling like the tiny, tiny dork that he is, and he says “Good morning, Mr. Brock– there was the weirdest dream last night,” and Eddie and Venom have their own internal dialogue about Peter’s dream about cats with lazer paws and eyes that took up “way more than 50% of their face, I swear.”
At night, that whole week, Eddie and Venom keep the streets of San Francisco safer than they’ve ever been, so that nothing interrupts the placid amity of Eddie and Peter’s cooperative photographic-journalistic article about the scenic piers and oceanic wildlife of the San Francisco Bay.
4
For perhaps the biggest scoop of their lifetime, Eddie and Venom get called in to do a story on none other than Tony fucking Stark, about the Sokovia awards no less. They prep for weeks, coming up with questions and counter questions and arguments that they hope are gonna press his buttons right, and then they arrive at the Stark Tower and they sit in the waiting room and an intern lets them into the conference room and they see Tony Stark’s face and both of them immediately say fuck it to all of those questions.
He’s had the shit beat out of him recently. His face looks like he wants to die, and Eddie personally knows what someone looks like when they want to die. He’s not really paying attention to them, eyes unfocused on the carpet. Yeah, no, new strategy.
“Ask him what happened,” Venom suggests. Eddie does: “What happened?”
“What?” Tony snaps, suddenly looking directly at them. “Oh, the Accords,” he spits the word out.
“No,” Eddie insists, “what happened, Mr. Stark?”
“Don’t call me that,” Tony whispers.
See, that? Eddie tells Venom, That was interesting.
Eddie waits. Technically– and this is a first for him– there’s no time limit for this interview. It’s done when Tony Stark says it’s done. Stark could have bought Drake with his pocket change, so Eddie is really at his beck and call on this one (not that this doesn’t rub him the wrong way, he still hates rich pricks with nothing to prove), but that means this can take all day if Stark’s okay with that. So Eddie waits.
“I almost killed my best friend yesterday, write that down for your stupid magazine.”
“Do you actually want me to do that?” Eddie asks, knowing he’s pressing the man’s buttons.
Stark sighs heavily, his head sitting in his hands, “No. I won’t drag Rhodey through the mud like that.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was fighting my fight and he– he fell.”
At Venom’s insistence, Eddie holds off on questions to say, “Isn’t that what friends are for? Fighting each other’s fights? I’m sure your friend doesn’t blame you.”
“What, Eddie Brock, renowned tough-talker to billionaires and morally gray businesspeople alike does therapy now?” Stark retorts. Eddie knows he’s lashing out because he feels insecure– that was him, at one point.
“Trust me, that’s not my voice talking.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I dunno, what’s your stance on Steve Rogers?”
Ooooh, that struck a nerve. Stark visibly stiffens, almost says something three times before snapping, “The man’s boyfriend shows up after being missing for over 75 goddamn years and Rogers just waltzes off like he’s not accountable for his actions– and of course he’s not, he’s perfect. I just keep creating death robots, and Rogers adopts them.”
“Allllright…”
“And then, of course, he takes half the kids in the divorce,” Stark laughs a high-pitched, unhinged laugh, “and I just have to pay the alimony checks! Why am I talking to you! You’re just some journalist! You’re the last person I should even consider telling this to, but I. Have. Nobody. Left. Pepper can’t stand me, Rogers left, and everyone else doesn’t know what to do, and I can’t be tellin this to the kid, he’s still a high schooler!”
“You have a son?”
“No, more of a protege. Pepper’s not ready for kids, I don’t think I am either.”
Venom reminds Eddie, Wasn’t Stark supposed to be tight-lipped and hard to get a straight answer from?
Eddie replies to Venom, Apparently not today.
“God, I’m a mess. I used to be big time, stopping alien invasions and stuff,” Stark sighs heavily, rubbing a bruised knuckle over a bandaged cut on his forehead. Venom notes to Eddie that they’ve also stopped an alien invasion, but nobody ever heard about theirs because they did their goddamn job right.
After several long minutes, Stark turns to Eddie, “What did you wanna ask me about for that story?”
“Uh, nothing, Mr.– uh, sir? Yeah. Nope, we have what we came here for.”
“We?”
“Have a nice day, Tony. Shit gets better, trust me.”
When they’re in the relative safety of their New York hotel room, Venom asks “What are you going to write the article about?”
Eddie grins. “It’s gonna be the shittiest article of my career,” he says, “I’ll get shit at work, but that guy needs a break a helluva lot more than we do, V.”
Hummin an agreement, Venom busies himself with removing some raw chicken from the mini fridge while Eddie gets to work on the worst story of his career: “Tony Stark is Right About the Sokovia Accords.”
5
And then, of course, they have to meet the star-spangled man with a plan himself, although after he went rogue everyone is pretty sure that they can’t call him “Captain America” anymore, but Venom and Eddie spot Steve Rogers (with Natasha Romanov why is she here again?) across town. They appeared to be looking for someone. Eddie decided to stay out of their way while he spent his day investigating the goings-on of a corrupt oil tycoon (and aren’t they all corrupt?).
He keeps spotting them all day, just around corners and whatnot. He gets a bad feeling, so he heads home early.
Bad plan, he opens his apartment door and they’re waiting for him in the living room, reading his magazines.
Nope, nope, no. Fuck this, fuck them, they’re out.
“Mr. Brock, we’d like to talk to you about–”
“Nope, we’re leaving, bye!”
Romanov has cut off his route through the door. Rogers is next to the kitchenette.
Fine, then. “V?”
“Copy.”
And with just the thinnest layer of black ink covering his legs and arms, he’s catapulting out the window and taking off through the labyrinthian streets of San Francisco much faster than any damn tourist could follow.
+1
They had been trying to enjoy a day off, since Venom had snapped back into existence yesterday, but apparently they can’t even get that after five years of being apart, so of course a magical goddamned portal opens up next to the stove.
“Eddie Brock?” a man wearing a children’s magician outfit asks, like he didn’t just step out of a portal in their fucking kitchen.
“Who the fuck–”
“I’m Dr. Stephen Strange, I don’t have time to explain everything, but we need your help: both of you.”
“Wh-wha-wha-what do you mean by that?”
“We don’t have time for you to play dumb!” Strange snaps. “Thanos is back, he’s got an army, it’s all hands on deck, Brock. We need everyone we can get, we’ve even got Spider-Man out there–”
“Peter Parker?” Venom cries, and then Eddie vocalizes “That kid’s, like, thirteen! No, nonono, you cannot be using child soldiers, that is not okay.” Strange looks like he’s gonna say something else self-important-sounding, but Eddie cuts him off, “How about this, we’ll come if you bench Peter Parker– he’s too young to be out there, man, you gotta know that.”
Strange shrugs. “We probably couldn’t get him out of there if we tried.”
So Venom takes over, Eddie comfortably incubating, spectating from within. They plow through row after row after platoon of these goddamned gross-looking aliens. They’d be a lot more noticeable if Ant-Man wasn’t two-hundred feet tall and there were fewer heroes in general, but as it stands, nobody even has time to give Venom a second look, and that almost disappoints him.
Then something happens: some blonde lady has the glove and she throws it on her hand and she snaps and then everyone disappears. Not unscarred, though, that lady: she’s got a badass new web of burn tissue stretching from her fingertips to her cheekbone and probably down to her waist too.
“Carol!” another lady, this one riding a pegasus (what the fuuuuuccckkk) cries, landing and tugging the sparkly glove off her hand.
“Better a cosmically charged bullet than a human,” Carol says. Venom meanders over towards Carol, mostly because it’s what everyone else is doing.
“What is that!?” a prepubescent voice shrieks at them. Peter goddamned Parker, looking like he lost a fight with a jet turbine.
Venom partially dissolves to give the kid a familiar face, “Mr. Brock!”
“Mr. who!?” another familiar voice snaps. Tony fucking Stark, who apparently lost a fight with a really big bread machine.
“Hey, it’s me– or, us, I guess. This is Venom…. we’re , uh…” a silent conference happens in which they try to assign themselves a label, and it doesn’t work well, “we’re boyfriends? Husbands? Partners, that sounds better.”
“Yeah, no, that’s weird,” Tony says.
“Fuck off, Stark,” they reply coolly.