Chapter Text
When they slither back into their reality in a sparkling haze of body on parr with a Cullen spending a sunny day out in Forks, Eddie’s head is bursting thick with cotton. It’s as though all of his thoughts, drunken though they were, had been stretched across their universal transverse, and like stuck gum, had resolutely fixed themselves in the Other World instead of coming home with him, leaving the spanse of his skull in need of filling.
Or stuffing. As if his brain had plied him with stuffing, and packed up for the journey, but missed the flight.
“Hangover,” Eddie gasps, holding hands out to either side and squatting his knees to make for stability. Reminiscent of a greenhorn surfer.
Bodyover, Venom parries. Bodyover Eddie, body overboard.
Inaccurate sailor locution aside, Venom sounding out in his mind is a slight relief that he had not forgotten something else during the univ-stretch. Eddie wobbles his way to the bed, feels it a bit as though to check for tangibility, then stiffly feels along it some more to ensure said tangibility spreads across enough room for his ass. Eddie sits. Waits for the room to stop spinning. Breathes out with a groan as it refuses.
“Ohhhhhhh, shit,” Eddie says. “What was that?”
We were evicted.
“Evicted? Like kicked out? Someone kicked us out?”
Yes.
“Well what does that mean? Who can even do that? Why?” Eddie has a sudden thought. “Did they even kick us back to the right place?” He looks about the room suddenly, instantly regretting the whip of motion. He groans and blows out a slow breath. “Ughhh... well it all looks the same.” He squints. “Wait, is that a broken glass? Was that glass broken before?”
Yeeesssss... Venom says, slowly.
“Yes it was? I didn’t break that, did you break that?”
It may have fallen over while we were expressing our ‘Inner Ninja’ before the warp. Venom’s tone takes on a guilty sulkiness. Eddie is sure it’s fifteen parts sulky, one part guilt.
“We? That seems like an ‘I’ thing buddy, I don’t have any part of me that’s ninja, and heads up the only thing you’ve got in common with a ninja is you both got this thing for black.”
What? That’s not true. I have an excellent Inner-to-Outer Ninja. I could be the world’s greatest Ninja. What about me isn’t Ninja-like?
“Well for starters they’re sneaky.”
I can be sneaky. I can do the sneak, Eddie.
“They’re so sneaky you never see them coming. You, you’re so loud you’re a black sticky gumball version of the rock that chases Indiana Jones,” Eddie blows out another breath, the world finally giving into gravity around him, settling still. He frowns back to an older thought. “So we’re back in our universe-place-thing now?”
It would appear so. There’s still a trace of sulk to the confirmation. Eddie sighs.
“What?”
We didn’t get to see the Human Centipede.
Eddie takes a moment to sort out and digest that thought, which is revolting to liken in anyway to digestion considering the context. But when he finally finagles the pieces together behind what Venom had actually meant, with appropriate context, he asks, “Wait you mean Spider-Man? You’re upset because we didn’t see Spider-Man?”
We didn’t get to see ANYTHING! With the complaint, Venom lunges them to standing, and two tentacles erupt and fold across Eddie’s chest. A display of crossed arms. Eddie reels from the sudden motion, own arms flapping as Venom begins to stomp them about the room in tantrum. We didn’t get to see the Centipede-—
“Spider—“
Or the Widowmaker—-
“Black Widow, who died—-“
Or the Giant Purple Alien!
“Pretty sure he was also dead buddy.”
Fine! We didn’t get to fight the undead Giant Purple Alien, Eddie, and it has made me very upset!
“Dead buddy, not undead. And fighting? Why would we want to fight any of these guys I thought you were just interested in meeting them? I’m pretty sure these guys were all heroes. Like superheroes. Except Purple Guy? I dunno we didn’t exactly get that sixth rundown.”
Yes, exactly! Superheroes, like us. And we would fight them to show that we are the most super of all the heroes, and they should serve us, like a King. King Hero. Venom plants them still, black limbs unravelling to land proudly at Eddie’s hips, puffing out his chest. In his shadow against the tobacco-white wall, Eddie sees a crest of spires rise atop his scalp, reminiscent of a crown.
“Ooookay buddy no more late night runs of Game of Thrones for you alright?”
The spires recede. The tendrils slime rapidly to Eddie’s shoulders, anchoring there as Venom’s face spills from them, floating around like a black sticky will-o-wisp to bring the two face to face. The white slashes of his eyes glower. Eddie sighs.
“Look, I get that you’re upset, but maybe it’s for the best. I mean sure, they had booze, but we don’t even know if that world had chocolate, or it was any good. I mean what if chocolate over there tasted like broccoli—“
No—-
“—-Or even vegan cheese? You remember that stuff?”
EDDIE, THAT’S DISGUSTING. DON’T SAY THAT. Venom’s snarl is well expressed with his needle like teeth, even with his smaller size.
“See? So maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t have to stay long.” Venom growls, but nonetheless the sound takes on a contemplative measure. Eddie raises his eyebrows in a ‘see-my-point’ fashion, self-assured.
Venom snaps his teeth then, shaking his little-Esper head from side to side.
No, Eddie, we need to go back there.
“What, why? You really want that tournament arc just so you can bully people other than me into doing what you want?”
No. That would be a bonus, and I don’t bully you Eddie I just have better ideas than yours. Eddie rolls his eyes. No Eddie there is a bigger problem that we have.
“And what’s that, exactly?”
You remember my son?
Eddie draws an immediate blank. The question is very out-of-left field from what they were just discussing. He thinks son, and nothing comes to bear, and then connects Venom to it and strangely passes along the thought of you cheated on me? before remembering the series of reasons why they’re camped out at this shitty highway-hotel to begin with.
“Carnage,” Eddie states. A touch of a question to it. Venom hums confirmation.
He was made from a piece of me, fused with you, that got left behind.
Venom is slowly getting better at working suaveness and mystery into his slow reveals instead of emanating as a school girl holding gleefully onto a juicy secret. There’s a touch of gravity building with the anticipation Eddie’s feeling, alongside the annoyance. He grimaces, “Yeah.”
And he fused with your ex-boyfriend and killed a lot of people.
“He fused with a serial-killer, and killed a lot of people.”
A lot of people.
“Yes.”
Like a lot a lot.
”Yes he literally committed a carnage worth of killings. What does that have to do with anything.”
When we came back, I may or may not have felt a little piece of me stay behind.
A sinking feeling, stone-dropped to stomach, hits Eddie. “When you say may or may not, do you mean you’re leaning ninety percent ‘may not’ like when you ‘may not have turned the stove off’, or—-?”
May or may not as in that time when I may or may not have forgotten you were allergic to cherries and ate cherry jam when you wouldn’t let us be Alien Freddy Krueger for Halloween.
The stone drops further, joined by a torrent of rocks that rattle and slide to a heavy, sickening weight in Eddie’s gut. “Shit. Oh shit. And if that little piece of you, the one that fused to Kasady, was able to cause so much damage just because it bonded with a psycho...”
Yes.
“If that psycho had powers...”
Yes.
Eddie is pacing now, “And Jesus if that thing is just as mental about patricide as your first kid was, and could figure out how to get back here—-“
Yes, yes. You are seeing the Venom-sized picture.
“Holy shit.”
Yes yes, all of the holy shits.
“We gotta go back,” Eddie scrubs a hand down his face, over his mouth, feeling his throat close and open as though fighting and failing to expel the leaden, mineral-made mass making a home in his stomach. “We gotta go back and get that piece of you here. Get it home.”