Chapter Text
Eddie and Venom's first impression of Amity Park, California, was that it smelled. Not bad, just weird, and strongly so. Everywhere they went from the highway to the hotel smelled vaguely of blood and old orange juice, like a screwdriver for vampires. Their second impression of Amity Park was that they took their “most haunted town in America” gimmick really seriously. The key to their hotel room was presented with an informational pamphlet on what to do in case of a “ghost attack”, contact information for local ghost hunters (one of whom, apparently, was a ghost himself), and portraits of ghosts who showed up frequently.
One of them was actually vaguely familiar. “Ember” had been some kind of wannabe rock star, right? Eddie remembered a concert on TV, and Venom insisting he change the channel because her singing voice was dangerous. “Okay,” Eddie murmured as he entered the elevator, “maybe it’s not just a tourist trap.” He still doubted that there was such a thing as ghosts, but he was willing to believe that an especially talented singer could do some damage to Venom.
You may want to rethink your position on ghosts, actually. Venom’s voice in his head was accompanied by a buzzing sensation from his brain stem, which told Eddie that Venom was thinking very hard about something.
“Oh?”
The vampire screwdriver smell. We have smelled it before.
“We have?” Eddie frowned. “Wait, we as in you and I or we as in symbiotes?”
We as in you and I. We smelled it once. After a funeral.
The hair on the back of Eddie’s neck stood up. A term tried to bubble up to the surface of his mind, from a class he took on the history of photography. Ve n om helpfully dusted off that memory for him. “Shit, have we been smelling fucking ectoplasm ?”
Naturally, the elevator door opened to reveal a maid, who had definitely heard at least the second half of that sentence based on her expression of surprise. Eddie started trying to formulate a distraction or explanation, but she slapped on a Customer Service Smile like it was a piece of armor and chirped, “Wow, most people can’t smell it, that’s really impressive! Don’t worry though, as long as you don’t eat at FentonWorks or something, you won’t be ectocontaminated enough to have any permanent ghostliness.”
“Ghostliness?” Eddie didn’t want to know. But he also really wanted to know, and he had made a career out of sticking his nose in inadvisable places.
“Some visitors report being able to see in the dark and stuff for a few days after they leave. Basically just temporary superpowers, nothing you need to worry about. Enjoy your stay!”
“Have an easy shift,” Eddie said blandly as the elevator door closed, him and the maid having traded places. Now, wasn’t that something fun to chew on. He could already see in the dark, of course, expanding his visual range into infrared and ultraviolet had only been the first permanent tweak Venom made to his physiology. Initially Venom had opened his eyes to the whole electromagnetic spectrum, but that revealed some shit that Eddie would have frankly preferred to leave back in college with his Lovecraft phase, so they stuck close to the human visual range. Anyway, now he had a whole new realm of otherworldly bullshit to ponder. “You know,” Eddie said once they had reached the privacy of their room, “given the number of people who have died with a grudge against us, is it really a good idea for us to spend a weekend in Ghost Central?”
“ Probably not, but there are also benefits to being here. ” Venom spooled themselves out of Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie kissed their cheek.
“Yeah, like what?” Eddie could certainly think of some benefits to redeem with Venom, now that there was a locked door and a bed available.
Venom’s sugar skull grin widened and they draped themselves over Eddie’s shoulders like a great python. “ The ectoplasm, if that is what it is. It is almost as good as brains. Not perfect, this wouldn’t sate me indefinitely, but we ought to be able to put off our next human hunt for an extra week or two. ”
Eddie beamed. “V, that’s great!” He kissed Venom’s cheek again and nuzzled their foreheads together. Hunting was hardly the worst part of living with an obligate brain eater (the thrill of the chase was actually a little fun, not that he would ever say that out loud) but he couldn’t deny that the Eating Other Humans part freaked him out. He had his rationalizations that it wasn’t cannibalism if it wasn’t his mouth, and obviously he wasn’t going to just let his partner starve , but he also cherished anything that let them put more space between Those Kinds Of Meals. That was why he let Venom wake him up at the crack of dawn on weekends to go terrorize the wildlife of the San Francisco Bay.
Their weekend in Amity Park was planned as a joke – Eddie had been working in Sacramento that week on some good old-fashioned muckraking, Venom saw a brochure about the haunted town, and they decided it would be fun to go check out the local tourist trap. Suddenly, it had morphed into a work trip, even if they were only working for themselves. Two of the local ghost hunters, the Doctors Fenton, claimed to be ghost scientists , so Eddie planned to interview them and also find out if he could buy (or steal) some more concentrated ectoplasm for Venom. For shits and giggles, he also wanted to interview this Danny Phantom character. Perhaps the two of them might even introduce themselves to Phantom as Venom. Spooky monochrome vigilantes gotta stick together, or something, right? Right.
The afternoon found Eddie strolling through Amity Park’s downtown. He and Venom had explored for a while from his bike, but the denser, older center of town was cute and walkable. It would be very Norman Rockwell, were it not for the patches of ghostly property damage. As they debated stopping for a late lunch at a restaurant called Nasty Burger, a black streak in the sky caught their attention. Eddie squinted up at the streak until he parsed it as a humanoid in a black and white outfit. “Hey Phantom!” he called.
The streak paused, and Phantom floated down to a reasonable speaking range. Close enough to smell, Venom recognized that much of the ambient ectoplasm belonged to Phantom, specifically. The little ghost had thoroughly marked his territory; Venom approved. Also, for an alleged ghost, the white-haired child smelled remarkably alive . He smelled dead, too, and it piqued Venom’s curiosity. Eddie felt Venom’s contemplative buzzing and ignored it, for the moment, to act like a normal person. Shake hands, introduce yourself, don’t say anything stupid or potentially insulting about how the kid has a solid fucking grip for a ghost. “You know, I came into town because I thought all the ghost stuff was just a tourist trap and it would be a fun little distraction. See, I’m a reporter and I’ve been chasing down legislators in Sacramento all week, I need a break, you know? But since Amity Park is legit, I was wondering if maybe you’d sit for an interview?”
Phantom, already a marshmallow person, somehow got even paler, and the air temperature plummeted abruptly enough to make Eddie’s lungs hurt. The ghost kid’s grin thinned and tightened into a grimace. “Nope!” He promptly disappeared. Judging by Venom’s sense of smell, he had turned himself invisible and was flying away at top speed. Which was damn fast.
Eddie laughed a little to himself and shrugged off the rejection. Fair enough, Venom didn’t exactly cozy up to the reporters that came to San Francisco wanting to interview them.
“ Oh my God you’re Eddie Brock!” exclaimed a voice from nearby. It belonged to a redheaded high school kid with stars in his eyes. “You’re my hero!”
“Oh, you have got to get some better heroes.”
“I started following your career after you got fired for looking into the Life Foundation and then kept going .” The kid’s voice dropped to a whisper. “It was inspiring.”
Eddie took deep breaths and tried not to have Cletus Kasady War Flashbacks. People being fans of his never seemed to turn out well for anybody. “Okay. Uh, thanks. So do you want an autograph or what?”
The kid grinned maniacally. “Nope! I just want you to hear me out: I know Phantom’s secret identity!”
Eddie felt Venom perk up at that, and decided to hear the kid’s crackpot conspiracy theory for the other’s sake. “Okay, but we’re doing this over lunch because that burger joint has been calling my name for the past half hour.”
Nasty Burger was, in fact, exactly Eddie’s preferred cuisine (heart attack on a plate). The kid’s name was Wes Weston, and Eddie was very proud of himself for not laughing out loud. And his crackpot conspiracy theory… actually had a lot of sense to it. And fuck, it was developed, Wes even whipped out a laptop and showed him a PowerPoint. Every hole Eddie could think of to poke in it was filled in by Venom’s extra senses. Though a ghost (half ghost?) living with ghost hunters was a sick sort of ironic that made him want to go do something rash.
“So… do you believe me? Most people don’t, even though the truth is literally right in front of them, staring them in the face, falling asleep in English class.” Wes looked hopeful. Eddie decided to dodge the question.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” he quoted in what he hoped was a sage tone. That had been his favorite line of Shakespeare before Venom’s entanglement in his life proved it right. “My question is… what’s your beef with Fenton?”
“Huh?”
“ Why are you trying to get the Fenton kid killed? Whether you’re right or partly right or completely wrong, if you keep shouting about this somebody’s gonna take it seriously and whisk him off to a fucked up mad science lab and he’ll never be seen or heard from again. You realize that, right?”
“What? That’s, that’s comic book shit, that wouldn’t actually happen!” Wes spluttered.
“That’s comic book shit? You’re the one who just gave me a PowerPoint on some asshole’s secret identity! This shit has consequences , Wes, I’ve done my own time at the business end of a scalpel just for being nosy. You’re not immune, Danny’s not immune.”
Wes started to argue more, about the sanctity of truth, but then he noticed a thin spot in Eddie’s beard, and that it was covering a scar. His gaze flicked down to the reporter’s arms, and sure enough, there were dozens of scars, all different shapes and sizes, hidden among his tattoos. Those didn’t show up on TV. He paled.
“You said you started following me after the Life Foundation? Well here’s a little fun fact for you: a woman died , because I wasn’t careful. I didn’t cover my damn tracks, they lead back to my whistleblower. You know what her boss did?”
Wes gulped. There was an aura of menace around his idol that wasn’t there before. He didn’t want to know, but it was like a trainwreck, he couldn’t possibly look away. “What?”
“He fed her to one of their starving test subjects, ” Eddie hissed. He winced a little, at how the kid turned green, and softened up a bit. “Look kid. You’re smart. You’re observant, you might actually be on to something with Phantom, but I’m not publishing any of it because I’m not about to feed some high school kid to the wolves. You wanna be a big bad investigative journalist and take down the rich and powerful with the written word? Sure, but you need to remember that there’s such a thing as unintended consequences, understand?”
Wes gulped audibly. “Yeah, yeah, I understand. Um. Thanks. It was cool meeting you.” The kid gathered up his laptop and all but ran out of the Nasty Burger.
Eddie slumped into the booth, groaning loudly. “God I hope I never meet another fan again,” he grumbled.
Venom squeezed themselves around and between his ribs, sort of an invisible hug. It seems you managed to knock some sense into this one, at least. By the way, you are being observed.
Am I?
Venom turned his head towards a table several feet away, where a dark boy and a pale girl were doing an actually admirable job of being subtle. They were hunched over the boy’s outdated PDA, sharing a pair of earbuds. Eddie might have thought they were just listening to the same music, if it weren’t for the little green gadget attached to the PDA and pointing directly at him. The Phantom smells just as much like a teenager as he does like a corpse. Perhaps those are his friends?
Eddie popped a few remaining fries into his mouth, shrugged with the shoulder further away from his watchers. Seems reasonable to me. I did tell Spooky I’m a reporter, maybe he sent his friends to make sure I didn’t publish Wes’ theory? I’m not worried about it.
Later that evening, at FentonWorks, Maddie and Jazz were in the kitchen together, Maddie cutting veggies for a salad while Jazz fluttered between pasta and chicken on the stove. Maddie was so proud of her little girl, if psychology didn’t pan out (and of course it would) she had a bright backup career in cooking. Jazz’s kitchen skills were impressive, all the more so because they didn’t come from either of her parents. The doorbell rang, and Jazz glanced up from the stove. “Mom, can you get that please?”
“Of course sweetie!” Her mood soured when she actually saw who was at the door. She held no fondness for the youngest Weston boy, who kept accusing her baby of being that absolute menace Phantom. “Can I help you?” She gave herself a mental pat on the back for not actually growling.
Wes hesitated. But then he rem inded himself that the GIW existed and had made credible threats about experimenting on Phantom. Man up, Weston . “Um, can I speak to Danny please?”
Maddie narrowed her eyes. “Is this about your little conspiracy theory? Because if-”
“Actually, I wanted to tell Danny that I realized I was, uh, wrong about that.”
Maddie beamed. “Wonderful! I’m so glad to hear that, let me go get him for you.”
A few moments later, Danny came down the stairs. As soon as he and Wes made eye contact, he paled and rushed to the door, barreling out of the house and dragging Wes with him away from it. “Wes, what the fuck is your problem?” Danny hissed, eyes mad and darting. “Why are you at my house, are you insane?”
Wes felt his stomach flip over. Danny had gotten into a habit of giving him the scary eyes, or reaching through objects, or floating a little when nobody else was around just to mess with him. He was genuinely afraid of his parents learning his secret identity. In a sickening way, it proved his theory even more. “ I’m sorry.”
Danny had been antsy, fidgeting, ready to run off at any second, but now he stilled and put his full gaze and attention on Wes. It was unnerving. “What?”
“I’m sorry for going around telling people you’re Phantom.”
Danny’s eyes narrowed. “What changed?”
“There’s this reporter in town who I’m a fan of. I gave him my whole spiel and then he turned around and asked why I was trying to get you killed. I didn’t… he made me realize that whether I’m right or wrong, I was putting you in danger by saying it. I’m sorry. I still know you’re Phantom! But I’m gonna stop talking about it now.” Wes didn’t know why he was saying all of this, he was perfectly aware that Sam and Tucker were eavesdropping on that whole conversation, but Danny visibly relaxed, so he supposed he was on the right track.
“Oh. Cool, thanks.”
“Yeah.”
They stood in awkward silence on the front stoop. A bird chirped nearby. “So… you play Doomed?” Danny asked.
The next day, Eddie was mildly startled to find Phantom loitering outside the hotel when he set out to interview the Fenton scientists. “What’s up, ghost kid?”
Phantom peered at him for a moment, sizing him up on criteria Eddie couldn’t guess at. “I heard you talked to Wes Weston yesterday. Um. Thanks for that.”
“No problem.”
“His whole thing about me being the Fenton kid is bullshit,” Phantom rushed to continue. “But it was dangerous so… thanks for nipping that in the bud.”
Eddie shrugged. Methinks the ghostie doth protest too much, he thought but didn’t say.
“Anyway, um, I kinda changed my mind. About you interviewing me? I still reserve the right to not answer anything I don’t feel like answering, but you seem cool. Also if we’re gonna do that can we do it somewhere that people can’t eavesdrop?”
Eddie grinned. He had already decided he wasn’t going to publish anything he learned in this town, but he still liked being nosy and he was glad to get to talk with Phantom. “You know this area better than me, lead the way man.”