Chapter Text
The lights are already out in their humble cabin, and the smell of the sea still clings to Eddie’s clothing and skin, partially making him yearn for a shower. It is late, he knows vaguely by the faded wink of the digital clock next to the drawer, but there’s no need to worry — He can fret over civilization and its duties when it’s morning, and rightfully so, he lets out a yawn, accommodating himself on the bed while V pools their mass onto his belly.
They’re unusually quiet, though. It’s late, Eddie knows that, but Venom isn’t a heavy sleeper, nor do they sleep in the typical human sense. He pokes the black mass on his belly, wringing a finger on it like it's silly putty, and smiles.
“Hey, you’re awfully quiet down here.”
“It’s nothing,” Venom mumbles in the back of his head, a lazy allure to their deep, usually eager tone of voice. “Sleep, Eddie. We should sleep, sleep is good, and dreams taste funny.”
“Uh, it sure does,” Eddie stretches his legs, and rubs his eyes, “But really, I like talking to you before bed. It’s kind of our ritual.”
As an answer, Venom forms their head from Eddie’s abdomen, earning another smile from his other.
“So… What’s on your mind, then?” Eddie asks, laying his own head onto the pillow. V hums, deep in his core, but he sees no flash of images, or feels any sensation.
Instead, he’s thrown back from his comfortable haze by a hasty tremor, as if coming from inside them, shaking both symbiote and man awake.
There’s an interference — it seems like the whole shape of the room, from the walls to the ceiling, suddenly got hit by a huge flash of kaleidoscopes, flashing so bright it decks Eddie with nausea and shock. He gags, scrambling on the ground, mouthing the name of his other.
And then, it hits him; the brusque push that makes him double over the floor, and the grotesque, wrong feeling of Venom dissipating from him.
“V?” Eddie gasps for air, desperately clawing the floor — V got out from his body, what the hell, Venom is not here, “Venom?!”
The bright flashes are gone as soon as they’ve appeared, and the room is silent all over again. Eddie stumbles to a sitting position, his eyes bleary by the sudden dark.
“Venom? Oh fuck,” His fumbling hands feel something sticky. It is unmoving, cold, and unresponsive.
“Oh, oh no,” Pushing himself to the ground, Eddie cradles the inky, pooling mass. They were lying on bed not long ago, just him and them, and now, Venom’s lying on the floor like he’s nothing but a stain, and Eddie’s lungs feel too heavy.
“Venom? V?” His eyes suddenly sting, and he wants to scream, to tear his throat off screaming.
“Venom?!”
Something moves within the mass — small but hefty bubbles come to rise, akin to boiling tar. Eddie sucks in a sharp breath, and pushes them close to his chest.
“Come on, Vee- Come in, c'mon."
The bubbling grows larger, until they burst to a piercing wheeze. Eddie is forced to drop them, as the wailing shifts to something rougher, deeper. He watches Venom twist into their humanoid shape, and catches a glimpse of their eyes; that sea of white that swarms around odd colors looks terrified.
“Venom!” Eddie gasps for air, and holds his symbiote through it. Through thick and thin, they hold on to each other. But the gargling turn less… boosted, less threatening. Venom’s shape seems to deflate, and something completely horrifying happens.
There's skin.
Darker than Eddie’s, peeling away the black of Venom’s body. Claws are no more, as Eddie watches Venom’s hands turn to nails and soft skin. His face, once noseless and grinning with rows of teeth, form a terrified look of… Of a man. Hair springs out, oily black, from his whole body, filling his cheeks and eyebrows and so forth.
In front of him, there’s no symbiote. It’s a human man, around Eddie’s age. Thin nose, plush lips. Black skin, big eyes. Curly dark hair.
Eddie inhales once, twice. What was supposed to be Venom blinks, mouth going downwards like they’re about to scream.
“E…” Venom’s voice is the same, but not. It’s deflated, quieter, human-like. Venom takes a look at their arms, their hands. Eddie holds his breath. “Eddie?”
They end up screaming at each other.
Venom tumbles on the floor, as Eddie screams. This Venom, this human who is supposed and morphed right out of V’s mass, is stark naked, and Eddie is too afraid he’ll faint to even question what the hell just happened.
A sharp noise, jolting both alert, interrupts the screaming. It’s a voice, followed by a thumping sound. It shouts something back in Spanish.
Venom’s human figure stands taller than him, with bulging muscles and a menacing stance. Yet, they’re human. Drastically smaller than their unison, with no tongue, teeth, or tendrils.
“Someone told us to shut up or they’ll call the police,” Venom blurts out, but they just sound like they’re affirming what their neighbors just said. “Eddie?”
“It’s…” Eddie wheezes out a painful thing, something like a laugh. “It’s you. Fuck, you’re… You’re human!”
“I’m,” Venom’s expression, now visible with brows and eyes and not a monstrous grin, makes Eddie want to scream and laugh at the same time.
What the hell just happened to them?
“We were in our room,” Eddie deadpans, trying to level his gasping breaths, “You and me. And… And you come out of me. Lights.”
Venom’s expression shifts to something amidst dawning horror, yet they’re listening.
“Y-you. Huh.” Eddie feels faint.
“Eddie, is this… what you feel, when you are nervous?” Venom looks at their hands again, their brows twitching. “When I… When I called you a loser because you were too nervous. Fainting.”
“What do you mean…?” Eddie spurs out.
Venom’s human body falls on the floor without ceremony. Eddie holds his own body up, feeling he might go down too if he allows himself to.
He tries to regulate his breathing, counting to ten and then to twenty, and then sitting down. Venom’s human body lies on the wood floor like a broken mannequin.
Right.
“Fuck, fuck, he fainted,” Eddie laughs, hysteria brimming in his mind as he paces around.
He needs answers, yet there’s none to even cross his mind. His alien symbiote is on the floor as a human, naked and passed out.