Literally No One Here Is Sane And Frankly That's Concerning As Fuck
It gets easier to breathe when Wade pulls Eddie into the other room and shuts the door, but not by much. Part of the issue might be that you almost don't want to breathe; breathing means sound, sound that you made, rough and raspy in your own ears and so fucking loud that even if he couldn't hear your thoughts he'd still know right where you were—
Something thuds into something else, in the other room, and Neet caws and flaps her wings twice. The first sound makes you flinch, the second one reminds you that yeah, she wants attention. You need to give her attention. You can't think about other shit right now.
Focus on the bird.
After some length of time spent carefully grooming her, smoothing down each feather and scratching the spots that make her narrow her eyes down to almost nothing and cock her head into your hand, you finally manage to get your breathing under control. Now your hands are shaking, but hey, you can work around that. Probably. As long as you don't have to hold a sword.
Fuck, you wish you hadn't thought that.
Neet croons and pecks at your arm as you take your hand off her so you can press both palms into your eyes, hard enough that the darkness of having them closed goes white and starry and almost painful. You need to pull yourself together, you need to not think about Cal, you need to focus on something outside of yourself right now. Except now that you got your hands up, you can't exactly lower them again; takes sight as a usable sense off the table. What else is there? Touch? All you can concentrate on that you feel is the persistent ache in your arm, that shit ain't gonna help. Smell? No. Hearing?
You hear your heartbeat, which also doesn't help. Wade and Eddie talking, incomprehensible through the wall between them and you. A ticking that's too slow to be a clock, and too evenly spaced to be anything else.
That last one is what you end up latching onto, counting the ticks and the heartbeats in between them, measuring out your breathing by the too-long seconds once you get a little less shaky. Three heartbeats between ticks, two ticks to an inhale and two to an exhale and one space in between; as long as you can hear the clock, nothing's gonna happen, because if you can hear it then you're not in the apartment, Bro only had digital clocks in the apartment and most of them were wrong anyway. This one's probably wrong, but at least it's steady.
"Dave?"
Gentle as it is, Wade's voice jacks your heartrate right back up into overclock mode again. You jerk your hands away from your face, but for a second after you open your eyes everything's still blurry as fuck from the pressure you've been putting on them—god, why are you such a fucking idiot? And why is Eddie crouched on the floor in front of you, only a lil' further away than Wade? Like. You can handle Wade being this close, it's almost a fucking comfort, but, uh...
You look straight at Eddie and think, I can get Deadpool's sword before he can stop me. I can hurt you before you can stop me. Do you fuckin' hear me?
If he does, he doesn't react. Then again, Bro wouldn't've reacted either, if he could've read your mind.
"Hey. Dave." Wade taps your shoulder with two fingers, a quick light touch that's not quite quick enough to avoid Neet's attempt to grab a beakful of his sleeve. Instead of pulling back and maybe dragging her along, he just leaves his hand there for the moment; even that lil' point of contact is something to focus on that ain't completely contained in you. "You okay?"
"Yeah. Fuckin' p-peachy." Do not fucking break down. Don't look at Eddie, either. Shit, you can't not look at Eddie. "Where the fuck is it?"
Wade just looks confused for a sec, but Eddie very obviously knows just what you mean. He touches his own chest, palm flat over his heart, and says way too calmly, "They're in me."
Shit. "So you're in my head. You can read my mind, you—you—" There goes your cool, there goes your ability to breathe, there goes Neet because she's just put her corvid ability to deduce cause and effect to use and took off, feathers almost brushing the ceiling as she climbs and then dives at him.
Eddie yelps and throws his arms over his head. That probably saves him from a nasty gouged-out eye, but it doesn't stop Neet from ripping a gash across the back of one of his hands.
He's gonna hurt her for that. He's gonna hurt her, and you're too fixated on the fucking inconsequential detail that his shirt's rode up with that movement, that he's not even kind of trying to guard that exposed strip of skin, that Wade's distracted and half-turned away from you and you can see the hilt of one katana and worse than that, in your head you can see what you could do—
Eddie yelps again, as Neet caws and makes another pass. This time, it goes from a panicked cry to something deep and wetly rasping, the kind of sound you've never heard come out of a human before.
And he...he changes. There's gotta be a word for this, how something dark and wet wraps around every inch of him like black ice melting in reverse. The process takes maybe two seconds, and when it's over there's something huge and black and not human standing there.
Neet has a different opinion on this thing than she had on Eddie, apparently. You wish it was fear, but no, she caws out the same sound you've heard the crows make at the chick back home who puts out tiny fancy pastries for them, and the moment that he lowers his hands she lands on his shoulder, perching there like it's not attached to a huge fucking alien.
You make a sound, when she does that. You're not really sure what it is. A whimper, maybe. Something pathetic enough that all of Wade's attention is immediately on you.
"Kid, it's okay—"
"Neet!" None of this is okay, is what you want to say, but her name's all that's gonna come out right now. The guy's moving, he's raising his hand and your crow's not gonna move even though he could catch her and crush her with one hand—
Neet less out a soft, satisfied crooning caw, as the thing that may or may not be Eddie oh-so-carefully strokes from her head to her back with one clawed finger.
Right, you're checking out of this whole fucking situation right now. Nope. You're done.
Well, you would be if your fucking legs worked. What actually happens is that you push yourself up off the ground in that smooth motion that Bro drilled into you a couple thousand times over the course of years, you get on your feet and half turned around before both your legs fill with pins and needles so bad that it feels like you stepped on a live wire. How fucking long were you sitting there, anyway?
Doesn't matter. You fucked up.
Wade catches you before you can actually wipe out, though. Thank fucking god; you're fast, you would've been able to get your arms underneath yourself and broken your fall that way, but it would've hurt. Maybe a lot. Wade catches you, scoops you up like he's gonna carry you across a nonexistent threshold, and instead deposits you in a chair that looks like hungry wolverines have been using it for a chew toy.
You immediately curl into as tight a ball as you can manage and close your eyes. You're done.
"Dave." Except he won't let you be done, apparently. Fuck. "They're not planning on ripping you apart or anything, okay? They—"
"Sssomehow we think you're doing more hhharm than good hhhere, Wade."
Something about that roughly hissing voice has you uncurling. Just a little. Just enough to look at the guy who's talking. Fuck, somehow you kind of assumed he wouldn't be able to talk with that thing on him. In him.
"Stay over there." There's absolutely no way you can make sure he does that. "Don't touch me. Neet, come here."
She caws your crow name, and doesn't fucking budge.
"Neet. Nietzsche." Fuck, you know she's hearing you, but she isn't fucking moving off that thing's shoulder. "Neet, c'mon...please."
Even with your best effort to keep your voice level, that last word comes out as pretty damn close to a sob. You see Wade wince, and then you just fucking close your eyes before you have to see whatever the rest of his reaction is gonna be.
"Venom. Give him the bird."
"Hhhe'ss ssscared of usss." Okay, why the fuck can you get this good of a read on his—no, their—emotions? Like you shouldn't be this sure that they're at least a lil' bit guilty right now. "Ssshe ssseemsss to like usss, we can't help that...what do you sssuggessst hhhere, Wade?"
"Oh my fucking god. Lean down."
Since neither of them seem to be showing that much interest in you right now, you risk opening your eyes, just in time to catch Venom dropping down to a crouch that really reminds you of a frog for some reason. Neet spreads her wings in alarm at the sudden motion, but she still doesn't actually move from her spot. Well, not until Wade steps over and grabs her with both hands, pinning her wings to her body so he can pick her up.
Oh, she's so gonna fuck with him for that later. You can tell she's furious, it's obvious in the way her throat feathers are fluffing up around his hands...he needs to be careful putting her down. You should warn him.
You can't.
Wade sets Neet in your lap with all the care of a guy balancing crystal on china, and she immediately retaliates by hopping around as soon as she's got her feet on your leg, making a dangerous hissing sound and just pecking the shit out of him. The only reason she only does it once is that you grab her and stuff her down into your coat before she can do anything worse.
So. Wade's bleeding and staring at the blood like it's absolutely fascinating, Eddie's...not quite Eddie, and you have an angry crow in your shirt. This is going just great.
At least Neet's not pecking or scratching at your skin. She's mad, but she's gently mad, like you pulled her out of another crow's nest. Actually, wait. That makes sense.
"She." C'mon, Dave, you can't just shut down. Talking is good. Talking to the alien is good. Start that sentence again from the top, don't freeze up this time. "She thinks you're a crow, dude. A...big, weird crow."
They consider that for a second, waggling that weird, slimy, technically eyeless (because there's no fucking way those white patches function as normal eyes) head in a way that makes you think of the calming repetitive motion of drumming your fingers against the table. "We've never been a crow before."
"Uh."
"We won't bond with yoursss, Dave." Yeah, that's amusement, you have no fucking clue how you can tell but you still can. "We won't bond with you either. We ssswear."
"...yeah. Good. Awesome. You can't see what I'm thinking right now, right?"
Venom shakes their head. "We only read our own mind."
"What the fuck does that mean—"
"The symbiote can bond with any sapient being," Wade breaks in.
Before he can continue, Venom interrupts him right back. "Not quite any, but clossse."
"Great, are you going to explain your own biology this time?"
"We refussse."
"Bitch." He rolls his eyes and flips them off with both hands, then looks back at you. "It absorbs the genetic component of mutation-based powers, right? Which was the whole point of having it bond with you for a second; I have no clue why the fucker decided it needed to chat with you and scare you out of your mind—"
"He wasss in pain." Venom hesitates for a second, grumbling something completely unintelligible under their breath, and then edges slightly closer. "We didn't expect that."
Oookay, too close. "Don't touch me," you warn again.
"Touch, or bond with?" God, they're big. You're in a chair, they're crouched on the floor, and still they don't even have to tilt their head in order to look you in the eye. "We promisssed, we'd ssstay out of your hhhead."
Fuck. How can you keep insisting you don't want them touching you when it really is the second thing you're terrified of? Can you actually tell them that you expect to be lied to here? Because you do. No matter what anybody tells you, nothing is gonna shake your wholehearted belief that if you touch any inch of Venom's black skin, you're going to have that same horrible guest in your head. He'll see everything, he'll know everything, and even if he's not Cal you're still gonna fucking die.
But. They're not moving. Just staying crouched there like a ridiculous melanistic frog, waiting patiently for any kind of reaction.
"Don't touch me." Hey, you can't back down from that now. Too fuckin' scared. "And fuck off, dumbass; I'm not in pain. You got some crossed signals in there or some shit, I don't know whose vibes you picked up but—"
"Your arm'sss been broken. Your powersss didn't ssset it quite ssstraight."
"Bro set my arm just fine, shut the fuck up."
"No. He sssucksss." Their mouth curls up in an expression that could be a smile or could be a threatening grimace, way too many teeth showing white against black. "Sssucked."
"Shut the fuck up." Why are you fucking angry now? It's not like they're wrong. Plus you can't be angry, that'll get your ass kicked. "You don't know what the hell you're talking about."
Venom makes a weirdly gurgling growling sound. Neet answers it with a muffled caw.
"Okay, you need to make it more apparent that that's a laugh, Venom." Wade rolls his eyes, settling himself on the arm of the chair you're in. You have no idea how he manages to balance there without touching you. "I mean, I know it's not you getting ready to pounce, and it's still terrifying."
"You mammalsss have ssso many prey triggersss."
"Uh, hello? Hate to tell you this, but right now you're a mammal too." When Venom makes that weird growling laugh again, Wade pokes at him with one foot, glancing down at you. "You ready to go, kiddo?"
Shit, he's not gonna make you ask for it? Thank fuck. "Yeah. Definitely."
"Cool." You completely fail to react to the car keys being dropped in your lap; if Neet weren't safely hidden away she'd be stealing them right about now. "Go start the car for me? I'll be out in...eh, five minutes."
Is there a reason you're immediately uneasy at that statement? Probably not, but it doesn't matter; you're fucking uneasy. Not that that matters either.
You nod, scoop up the keys out of your lap, and head for the door. If you go a couple feet out of your way to avoid getting too near Venom, who could really blame you?