Newcomer
Everyone reacts to change differently, sometimes that change is a new sibling and sometimes those reactions are unpredictable. Eddie and Venom learned this the hard way when they brought their youngest home. Carnage had dealt with the arrival of new siblings before so it wasn’t quite as surprising to them the second time. To their middle four children however, the shock couldn’t have been greater. But each of their young children dealt with the big life change in their own way.
Scream was decidedly unhappy about the newcomer. Her first act against him was the day after he was brought home. She drew all over the living room walls, even writing Sleeper’s name among the mess to frame him and placed an incriminating crayon in his little hand as he napped.
“Oh my God.” Eddie stated when he entered the living room to find the walls covered in marker and crayon scribbles.
“Sleeper did it!” Scream was quick to tell them.
“Oh, did he?”
Venom and Eddie both looked to the suspect in question and he was fast asleep, still gripping the smoking crayon.
“We...doubt that, sweetheart.”
“But he did! I saw him! He’s in trouble now right?” She grabbed Eddie’s hand.
“Scream, why are you trying to pin this on Sleeper? We know he didn’t do it.” Eddie knelt down to her eye level.
“How do you know? He has the crayon! Punish him!” She pointed at Sleeper.
“Because he is one day old and he can not do anything.”
“He can cry.” She scowled as she corrected them.
Phage was also less than thrilled about his new little brother. When Sleeper was two days old Eddie and Venom left him buckled into the safety of his bouncer and went into the kitchen for no more than three minutes. When they returned their newborn was nowhere to be found inciting a panic in the furthest reaches of their shared soul. But their older son Phage-sweet, quiet, unassuming Phage was sitting innocently on the couch playing with a paper plane.
“Where is Sleeper?” Eddie asked.
“Who?” Phage asked, not looking away from his paper plane.
“Sleeper! Sleeper! Your baby brother! Where is he?!” Eddie’s voice went high pitched.
“Oh. I don’t know.” Phage shrugged.
“What do you mean? He was just here! Did one of your siblings take him somewhere?”
“I don’t know.” Phage shrugged again.
“Phage.” Venom’s voice rumbled out in place of Eddie’s making Phage actually look up.
“We need you to think darling. What happened to Sleeper?”
Phage stared at them frozen, like he didn’t know what to say, when the too familiar sound of screechy newborn cries emanated from the hallway. The noise was muffled but Eddie and Venom were able to follow it to the closet where upon opening the door Sleeper was having an existential crisis over being left all alone in a very small, very dark room. Luckily though, as with any very young child experiencing an existential crisis, it was immediately remedied by cuddles.
“Phage did you do this?” Eddie was more confused than upset.
“I don’t know.” Phage shrugged a third time, slid off the couch and left.
Lasher and Agony on the other hand were thrilled about their new baby brother. So much so that they were getting in Eddie and Venom’s way which was very sweet but also very agitating. Three days after bringing him home they woke up in the middle of the night to find Lasher and Agony trying to feed Sleeper a bottle that he very much did not want to drink and very loudly objected to. While they were in the shower Lasher and Agony hijacked an exhausted Sleeper from his nap and brought him outside to play. Later that evening Sleeper wanted nothing more in the world than to cuddle with his parents but he couldn’t because Lasher and Agony wouldn't let him go. Eddie and Venom were elated that Lasher and Agony already loved Sleeper so much but they couldn’t fathom why they were so interested in him- newborn babies were boring.
“Scream and Phage hate him and Lasher and Agony won’t leave him alone.” Eddie sighed.
The kids were in school so they finally had a moment’s peace in the house. Sleeper, being neither scorned nor bombarded, was curled up asleep on Eddie’s chest like a warm, happy cinnamon bun.
“We need to get them all on the same page as Carnage.”
“Tolerant at least, loving at best and eager to let us do all the work?”
“Exactly.”
“How do we convince Scream and Phage that a new little brother isn’t a bad thing?”
“The same way we convinced Carnage, I suppose.”
Scream was busying herself with some very important coloring when she suddenly heard her dad in the next room, he sounded...angry. Her dad almost never got angry! She figured that someone must be in big trouble and she wanted to see it! She peeked around the corner into the living room and saw her dad standing with his arms crossed and a mean look on his face.
“Sleeper, you are in big trouble young man. Look at this mess!”
She noticed her dad had her father’s sharp fangs as he spoke and they only did that when they were really, really mad. She noticed giddily that her parents changed their minds and that Sleeper was getting blamed for the big mess she made. But somehow it didn’t feel as triumphant as she imagined it would.
“You are grounded. No playtime, no cuddles, no hugs, no kisses.”
Scream couldn’t help but be reminded of all the many times that her parents should’ve been mad at her but they weren’t. They always loved her! Even when she was bad!
“You’re going to go to our room and you’re going to stay there.” Eddie said.
Scream couldn’t take it anymore, especially knowing that Sleeper didn’t make the mess.
“Stop being mean to him!”
Scream was stopped in her tracks as her brother Phage stormed passed her into the living room.
“You’re being mean! He’s just little!” Phage pointed angrily at his parents.
“Phage-”
“No! He doesn’t know so you have to be nice!” Phage was filled with righteous anger on behalf of his baby brother (who wasn’t actually in any trouble at all, of course).
“Phage is right, daddy! You can’t be nice to us but be mean to Sleeper! He didn’t do anything wrong! I made the mess, not him.” Scream finally admitted to the surprise of no one.
Scream scooped Sleeper up and hugged him tightly as if to protect him from their parent’s discipline.
Eddie just kept his arms crossed as he and Venom continued to grumble as Phage and Scream whisked Sleeper out of the room with their newfound sense of older sibling protectiveness guiding them.
“Wow. That actually worked.” Eddie finally said once they were alone.
“Of course it did. They are too much like you to let such an injustice go...And no matter how they act at first they do love him, just like Carnage loved them.”
A mass of blackness spilled out of Eddie’s shoulder to run down his arm and squeeze his hand tightly.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Eddie smiled and squeezed back.