Chapter Text
PARASITE?
“Yeah, it’s a term of endearment.”
APOLOGIZE.
“No.”
APOLOGIZE!
“Fine, I’m sorry. So, what’d you wanna do now?”
THE WAY I SEE IT, WE CAN DO WHATEVER WE WANT.
Eddie chuckled and rolled his eyes as he came to the crosswalk near Mrs. Chen’s shop. The twilight had descended upon the city, illuminated by the sharp colors of neon lights, bouncing their reflections back and forth in shop windows and rearview mirrors of parked cars. The walk from Anne’s place in Telegraph Hill back down to Chinatown had been short and leisurely, but darkness had fallen fast, and with it came the predator instincts prickling at the base of his skull. Perhaps it was only the adrenaline still flooding his system--they had just eaten a guy whole, not two minutes prior--but he noticed that his perception was heightened. Colors were brighter, noises easier to separate into layers. He could roll his senses around in his mouth like a wine, picking up notes of phone conversation across the street, canned sitcom laughter trickling from an upstairs window, a car alarm from a block away. He could taste in the air the distinct scents of five different Chinese restaurants competing for his attention. His world had never seemed so saturated with raw stimulus. We can do whatever we want.
“It’s a big world out there,” he said, blinking a few times to clear his thoughts, “You’ve gotta give me some options here, big guy. Don’t wanna have me overloaded by choices.”
He bounced on the balls of his feet as he waited for the light to change, and he could feel his symbiote’s thoughts turning over.
WELL WE’RE NOT HUNGRY ANYMORE, said Venom decisively.
“Yeah, I figured as much,” Eddie said with a laugh as the crosswalk sign lit up for him, then a look of realization slapped him in the face.
“Hey, so that guy we just ate. Did you just absorb him into your mass and turn him into goo, or are you gonna co-opt my digestive system?”
I SUPPOSE WE’LL FIND OUT SOON ENOUGH.
Somehow Eddie could hear a smile in that disembodied voice. He shook his head and gave a low groan.
“Ah fuck, I’m not looking forward to that. If I barf up a human toe later, I’m kicking you out.”
A stranger passing by them in the crosswalk looked up from her phone and gave him a horrified look. Eddie quickened his pace across the street, and ducked down a busy pedestrian street that was little more than an alleyway, packed with lingering visitors to the fortune cookie factory and patrons of the florist shop. He could feel a sense of amusement spreading its tendrils out from his hindbrain, but he also felt a stronger awareness guiding his perception to the crowd around him, marking out those who might pose a threat. It was always a tight squeeze through this alley, and he usually didn’t mind crowds. However, he found himself drawing in his shoulders and checking over his shoulder for routes of escape. He noticed for the first time that the alley was so narrow, he could easily stand on one fire escape and reach his arms out and- well no, his arms weren’t quite long enough. But Venom’s certainly were.
“So, food is, uh... off the table, as they say,” he said in a lower voice barely audible over the tangled din of Cantonese surrounding him, “Is there anything else you wanna do? The night is young. Personally I think we could use some well-earned fun.”
WHAT DO YOU USUALLY DO FOR FUN?
Eddie gave a shrug and ran a hand through his hair. “Tell you the truth, before you came and set up shop in my nervous system, I spent most nights for the past few months getting drunk and feeling sorry for myself.”
YOU REALLY ARE A LOSER.
Recent memories bobbed to the surface of Eddie’s mind like detritus caught in the tides of the bay- the thick and familiar smell of Eddie’s favorite bar, and the smooth feel of the bar top under his hands. The listless buzz of cable news on a lonesome night at home. The hollow despair in the pit of his stomach as he drank himself to sleep. He could feel Venom examine each memory with swift precision, then toss it back into the waters. With some effort, Eddie dragged their focus back to the present, to the old walk back home that somehow felt as though he were taking it all in through new eyes. They emerged from the alley and turned unto Washington Street. Eddie kicked an empty can out of his way and shoved his hands into his pockets.
“Hey, we’re both losers, you and me. A couple of losers, who just so happened to save the world. So maybe celebrations are in order.”
He rounded a corner onto a wider street and soon came to another crossing. He reached out for the crosswalk button, but paused with his hand in mid air.
“We turn left here on Clay to go home. Is that what we’re doing, or have you thought of something fun?”
WELL, said Venom after a moment, LETS GO TO YOUR FAVORITE BAR AND GET DRUNK LIKE LOSERS DO.
“That’s the spirit,” Eddie smiled, pressing the button to continue straight ahead. “It’s a bit of a walk- all the way back in the Tenderloin. But it’s worth it. It’s a little hole-in-the-wall Scottish pub, you’ll love it.”
DRINKS ARE ON ME.
“Ha! The man’s got jokes!” said Eddie, then quickly added, holding up a finger, “But really it’s my brain you’re using, my vocabulary, my memories. So really it’s my sense of humor.”
Eddie could feel his eyes rolling, but he wasn’t the one that rolled them.
YOU CAN THINK THAT IF YOU WANT. BUT IT WASN’T A JOKE.
Before Eddie could react, he felt a warm ooze pooling beneath his shirt. With a feeling like his abdominal muscles were being gently split open and pried apart, a thick lump of Venom’s mass forced its way out of his skin.
“Jesus Christ!” was all Eddie could say as he pulled his jacket closed with one hand and held the other hand to the wet patch like he was trying to staunch the blood from a wound. But instead of the formless slime he was expecting, his palm met something solid and rectangular, surrounded by a thin coating of ooze that was quickly retracting into his body in little rivulets, like sand pulling out from under bare feet when the waves retreat. In the time it took him to register the sensation, the shape was already dry, and fell densely into his hand. He withdrew the mass from under his shirt and stared at it in the sallow light of the street lamps.
It was a wallet.
But it wasn’t his wallet.
He flipped it open to find the ID and saw, staring back at him, the face of the thug from Mrs. Chen’s shop.
The sound of a car horn snapped him back to reality; he was standing in the middle of the crosswalk, holding up traffic.
“Shit shit shit shit shit,” he huffed as he scrambled to the other side of the street, heart racing. He leaned his weight on one of the letterboxes in front of the post office, and tried to catch his breath.
“How the fuck did you do that?” he mouthed. He gripped the wallet in a white-knuckled fist and rubbed fresh beads of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
I TOLD YOU. WE CAN DO WHATEVER WE WANT.
“You just Alien’ ed a dead guy’s whole wallet out of my torso.”
LIGHTEN UP, PUSSY. ARE WE GETTING DRINKS OR WHAT?
“Give- just give me a minute, man,” he gasped.
A growling sigh rattled Eddie’s brain stem, and he looked down to find his legs walking of their own accord. He blinked dumbly at his feet, striding across the filthy sidewalk, crunching cigarette butts and gum wrappers beneath the soles of his sneakers. He snapped his head back up just in time to catch a “Watch where you’re going, asshole,” from a surly pedestrian, and hop out of their way. He steadied his breathing and slid the wallet into his front pocket. He wondered how Venom knew the route to the bar, then realized that was a stupid question before he even asked it.
YES, IT WAS A STUPID QUESTION.
Eddie dragged a hand across his stubble and tried to adjust his gait so that it didn’t look as though he were being puppeteered, and Venom eased back beneath the surface to return control of his legs.
YOU GOOD?
“Yeah. Yeah, I just. Still weird to think about. I ate a guy, and then said a funny quip, but then...his wallet just makes it more real. Saying ‘I ate a guy’ is almost funny because it’s ridiculous. Saying ‘I killed a guy and took his wallet’ isn’t as funny.”
YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY...NO BODY, NO CRIME.
Eddie could sense, somehow, Venom’s face splitting into a devilish grin.
“Alright, hold up. As an investigative reporter, I can assure you that’s for sure not how it works!” But Venom’s grin had begun to tease up the corners of Eddie’s own smile.
They walked together in easy silence for a few minutes as the Cantonese signage began to give way to recognizable franchises, and soon they came to a long tunnel. Eddie used to love riding his motorcycle through this underpass- the echo of the engine bounced off the rounded walls and reverberated in his bones.
His bike was certainly totaled.
He hadn’t seen it since the big chase with Drake's men last week, when Venom had first come out in full force. The crash site was probably a crime scene, the wreckage of his bike locked up in evidence somewhere. He let out a sigh as the cars whizzed passed.
SORRY I COULDN’T SAVE YOUR BIKE, Venom said quietly.
“Don’t sweat it,” Eddie said with a sad smile, “You fixed my legs, and that’s probably way more important. Besides, if it weren’t for you, that high-speed chase would’ve been a lot shorter.”
TECHNICALLY, IF IT WEREN’T FOR ME, YOU’D HAVE BEEN DEAD IN THE WOODS BEHIND THE LIFE FOUNDATION LONG BEFORE THAT.
Eddie scoffed.
As they exited the tunnel, an entirely different city unfolded before them. A shinier city. A whiter city. Venom flipped through the map in Eddie’s mind.
LEFT ON GEARY?
“Yeah, but...” Eddie trailed off, squinting in the distance. “I’m gonna show you a shortcut. C’mon.”
He jogged across the street to the corner of Union Square, passing through a little avenue of palm trees and into the plaza. “If you thought the city looked beautiful from up high, just wait ‘til you see this.”
Union Square was a flat rectangle, surrounded by some pleasant trees and shrubs, with an eight story tall monument in the center. There were some people milling about under the street lamps. Classic plaza stuff.
I DON’T UNDERSTAND, said Venom, searching.
“Well, alright, it’s not much to look at now, I’ll give you that,” said Eddie, raising his hands. “And there’s more stuff underground, but I’ll save that for next time. No, I want to show you something.”
He strode across the square to the monument and planted his feet just so.
“At Christmas time, the Macy’s does this whole tree lighting ceremony. Over there, to the right. They get a Christmas tree as tall as this column, with a big red star on top. Thousands of people come to see it. And over there, to the left, they turn the square into an ice skating rink. Annie and I used to come…”
His voice trailed off as he squinted his eyes, trying to superimpose a mental image over the scene. It took a moment of adjusting, but finally he was able to conjure the right memory. He could see through Venom’s eyes, looking at the plaza from within his own memories, like virtual reality. There was a chill in the air, and the smell of hot chocolate. Couples laughing and skating and falling down together in the ice rink. Lights strung up in the palm trees. A feeling of contentment welled up in his throat. And then he blinked, and it was gone, replaced by a wave of vertigo.
Venom was silent.
Eddie crossed to the opposite corner of the square and bounded down the steps two at a time, stopping in front of a huge sculpture of a heart, painted in abstract shapes.
“This is, uh. This is where I proposed to Annie,” he said simply. He placed his hand on the cool surface of the heart, then drew it away quickly.
“Alright, enough of that," he said with a sniff, "Let's go get drunk. It’s not much farther.” He put his hands back into his pockets and continued down Geary Street, towards the pub.
Venom remained silent along the last leg of their walk, and Eddie’s mind was able to stretch out enough for some contemplation. Brief bout of melancholy aside, he was still in good spirits, he thought. All things considered. He’d had a strange enough week so far that at this point he assumed the shock and horror would hit him all once in a few days. But until then, he might as well have a drink with his new permanent roommate.
Well I’ll be the one drinking, he thought. Can’t have an alien head pop out of my torso at the bar. They’ll have to just piggyback off my buzz I guess. Wait, will alcohol even have an effect on them? Will I get plastered and they just stay lucid, piloting my body so I don’t make a fool of myself? Like a built-in designated driver, holy shit... Or will they get drunk too, and I’ll have to deal with a drunk internal monologue? Will that make me double-drunk? He imagined Venom’s deep growl of a voice becoming slurred and silly, and hollering like a Woo Girl. The thought seemed to split open a dam of tension within him and sent laughter tumbling out of him, earning him a few strange looks from passersby.
I CAN HEAR YOU, YOU KNOW.
“Sorry, man,” Eddie choked out through his laughter, steadying himself on a signpost.
DO I NEED TO FIND YOU A MEMORY OF YOU BEING A SLOPPY DRUNK? I WON’T HAVE TO LOOK VERY HARD. I’M SURE WE CAN BOTH LAUGH AT THAT.
“No, no, I’m good,” Eddie said, while his chuckling faded into a contented smile. His ears pricked up at the sound of muffled Irish pub music beckoning them from a few doors down. The Edinburgh Castle Pub was finally in their sights.
“C’mon then, tough guy,” he said, “Let’s put your money where your mouth is.”
EDDIE, I CAN DRINK YOU UNDER THE TABLE.
“We’ll see about that.”