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Entry tags:
VENOM FIC: Us, or Nothing
Title: Us, or Nothing
Pairing: Eddie/Venom
Rating: NC17
Words: ~3,100
Summary: You are mine, Eddie Brock. We are us. And we will be us until the end. I will have you, or I will have nothing.
Notes: Inspired by the Last Dance Trailer
[AO3]
Us, or Nothing
As it turns out, Venom can get the horse to go really fucking fast. Eddie's barely scrambled onto the thing's back before it jolts into a breakneck gallop, its tentacle-mane writhing in the wind and its hooves churning up gritty clouds of sand. Dirt and leaves sting Eddie's sunburned skin. He's able to cling to the horse's neck while they're cutting across the flat plain of the farm, but once they hit uneven ground, he starts bouncing around like a drunken pinball, more off the horse than on.
It's been a while since Eddie's been scared of anything; with Venom inside him, he's basically indestructible. But Venom left him completely when they joined with the horse. He feels empty now—empty like everything in his chest has been scooped out, hollowed straight through to his spine—but that space is quickly filling with sheer terror.
The horse jerks to one side as it veers around a bush, nearly laying itself down like an out-of-control bike. Cursing, Eddie scrabbles around for something to hold onto.
Hey! Venom barks. Watch the ears!
Eddie starts to tell them to fuck off—he doesn't need backtalk from his asshole alien when he's this close to pissing himself—but then the horse is pushing up a sharp rise that he just knows ends in a cliff. Instead of slowing or changing course, the thing fucking bears down. Then it jumps for it, catapulting Eddie a good two hundred feet into the air before arcing down toward the valley below.
Leaving Eddie behind.
Eddie freefalls. The horse is just a black speck moving against the gray-yellow-brown of the Chihuahuan Desert, and the ground is coming up fast. It's almost funny: Eddie spent his journalism career chasing stories through drug dens and abandoned warehouses and dirty back alleys, and then Venom found him, and they started seeking out muggers and traffickers and killers, the type of people a sane man would deliberately avoid. He came through all of that with just a few bruises and scrapes, and he survived two vicious battles against stronger symbiotes, one of those on top of a fucking rocket. Now he's going to die from falling off a horse.
And Venom—Venom will die, too. The horse might hold them for a few more hours, and that might give them enough time to reach the nearest pueblo. But no one there will be their perfect match, not like Eddie is. They'll have to hop between hosts every couple of days, maybe every couple of hours, and—
Eddie! Hold on!
Hysterically, Eddie thinks, Hold on to what?
Thick tentacles shoot up from the horse and seize Eddie by the arms. For a moment or two, he's suspended in midair. Then he's yanked onto the horse's back so forcefully that something snaps in his left thigh. After a few agonizing bounces, the horse finds flat ground again and its gait evens out. More tentacles wrap around Eddie's waist, pinning him down.
I've got you, Eddie. I've got us.
Eddie hunches against the horse's neck and tries to breathe through the white-hot pain in his leg.
+++
Roughly an hour later, they stop in the middle of what looks like an abandoned ranch. As Eddie sits up straight, he sees a corral with a collapsing fence and a field that's overgrown with yucca and scrub. A few forgotten bales of hay are withering in the sun. A short distance away, an 80s Toyota truck is hitched to a dented aluminum horse trailer. The trailer's tires are flat, and the truck is covered in rust.
Eddie's fingers are numb from white-knuckling the horse's mane. He flexes them as he asks, "Where are we?"
No idea. But we must walk from here. The animal cannot take much more of us.
The land is flat and open, leaving them far more exposed than Eddie is comfortable with, considering that the assholes chasing them have helicopters at their disposal. He gives serious thought to sheltering in the trailer—at least long enough for Venom to heal his leg—but after another look around, he spots a small cabin or shed hidden in the shade of a cottonwood tree.
"There," he says, pointing.
The horse heads for the cabin at a slow walk. Its breathing is labored now, its chest heaving and Venom's huge tongue lolling from its mouth. Foam is dripping from both of its nostrils, spattering onto the dirt. As it stops beneath the cottonwood, it lets out a thin, pained whine. The tentacles wrapped around Eddie tighten. He's lifted up and set on his feet.
Well, his foot. He stands like a flamingo while he waits for Venom to hop back inside him. When it doesn't happen immediately, he touches the horse's flank and asks, "What are you doing?"
Fixing the damage I caused.
Eddie shrugs out of his button-down and uses it to wipe the sweat and dirt from his face and neck and arms. It's hot as hell; the late-afternoon sun is low in the sky and blazing a bright, furious orange. Eddie squints as he watches the horizon. He tells himself that the shimmers he sees are heat mirages, not more fucking helicopters.
Eventually, Venom makes a deep, satisfied sound and curves a thin tendril around Eddie's wrist. They jump into Eddie in a sudden, seething rush, and it's such a relief to have them back—to have that empty space filled up—that an embarrassing noise catches in Eddie's throat. Venom spreads through every part of Eddie: pulsing up and down his arms, curling around and around his chest, chasing up and down his legs. After a few cautious ripples in Eddie's injured thigh, they slide up to their favorite place—underneath Eddie's collarbones.
"Is it going to make it?"
His name is Escalante. And he will live. He just needs rest. After a pause, Venom adds, So do you. Your leg is broken.
"Yeah, I noticed."
Venom mutters something that sounds suspiciously like pussy and wraps themself around Eddie's leg from hip to ankle. It's enough support that Eddie can waddle over to the cabin.
Inside, it isn't much. The ranchers had probably used it as a place to rest during the worst heat of the day; the thick adobe walls have brought the temperature down a good fifteen degrees. A low couch is bleeding stuffing on one side of the single room, and a mattress is gathering dust on the other. A table is sitting between them, its top scattered with bits of metal that might be from a broken stirrup. A grimy length of rope is hanging from one of the two chairs. Several fat ceramic pots are lined up underneath the only window, their painted patterns faded from the sun.
Lie down.
"Where?"
On the bed. Obviously.
"Obviously," Eddie scoffs, giving the mattress a more thorough look. An old sleeping bag is open on top of it, flannel side up. Judging by the dust, it hasn't been touched in well over a year. "Lift it up first."
Why?
"Because we're in the desert! Or did you forget about the scorpion in my boot?"
How could I forget? You screamed about it for fifteen minutes.
"That's because it was a scorpion! In my boot!"
Venom heaves out a sigh that rumbles behind Eddie's ribs. They wind down Eddie's arms and beyond and use their giant hands to hoist one end of the mattress off the floor. Sure enough, a rattlesnake rears up from the space between the mattress and the wall, irate and hissing. Sighing again, Venom splits a tentacle off the closest arm and catches the thing just below the head. They observe it for a moment—a long moment Eddie spends squirming to avoid its thrashing tail—then abruptly join with it, turning about half of it black.
Eddie yelps, "Jesus Christ," and squirms some more. "What are you doing?"
I'm telling it to go away. Venom reaches the tentacle through the doorway and drops the snake in the scrub. It promptly—and thankfully—slithers off. Happy now, you big baby?
"Yes."
Venom sighs again, but this time, it's more fond than irritable. They help lower Eddie to the mattress and rumble, Rest, meatsack.
The sleeping bag smells musty, but with Venom inside him, the dust that clouds up as he stretches out only tickles his nose for a few seconds. He shifts until he's somewhat comfortable and closes his eyes. He should rest; fatigue is pretty much the only thing Venom can't fix. But his brain is going a mile a minute. The last eighteen hours keep flashing behind his eyes like a fucked-up movie.
He says, "I want to know who's chasing us," and scrubs a hand through his hair. It's dirty enough to be itchy; he needs a shower so badly he can taste it. "At first, I thought it was 'cause of the jailbreak. I wouldn't put it past Mulligan to extradite me out of spite. He's just that kind of asshole, you know? But…"
But…
"No way these guys are cops. Not with those weapons. They've got to be military. Black ops."
Secret government shit. Area 51.
"Yeah." Eddie tests his bad leg by flexing his foot. His thigh aches a little, but it's nothing compared to the pain he felt when the bone first broke. "Area 51."
Someone saw us.
"Probably." Cell footage of their street fight with Drake's goons had gone up on YouTube about a month after the rocket exploded, but when Anne heard about it, she'd made it disappear. Eddie's been afraid to ask how. "Cameras everywhere these days. Even in small towns."
Eddie. Venom creeps down into Eddie's gut and churns there, prickly and sour. You tried to warn us.
"Wait, wait, wait." Smirking, Eddie leans up on his elbows. "Are you… are you actually admitting that you were wrong?"
Venom says, Don't get used to it, asshole, with their usual attitude, but they sink deeper into Eddie's gut and churn a little more.
Eddie can feel Venom's remorse, and that's enough. He rests his hand on his belly, right where they're restless and unhappy, and pats there until they well up through his t-shirt and form a hand for him to hold.
He says, "This is on both of us. We've been careless."
We did not always have a choice.
Before Eddie ditched his phone, Dan had texted him a link to a Chronicle article telling the "official" story about the night they fought Carnage. According to SFPD, film students accidentally damaged the cathedral during a guerilla movie shoot, and the "monsters" caught on news cameras were just actors in costumes. As a cover, it was just dumb enough to fool most of the public, but it had holes in it. Too many holes to trick any federal agencies that really bothered to really look.
But they hadn't had a choice. If they hadn't showed up to Carnage's playdate, the symbiote would've forced them into a confrontation somewhere else, and the local news stations would've aired that footage instead.
"We'll move on," Eddie decides. They can try for Veracruz, maybe catch a boat to the Caribbean. "Lie low."
Eddie. I will protect us.
Eddie squeezes Venom's hand. "I know, buddy. You always do."
I will not let them separate us.
Eddie says, "Yeah," but he's not sure he believes it.
The truth is, that's probably what these assholes want. They might "observe" him for a while, just to see how he and Venom work together, but once they get bored of that, they'll shuffle him off to some black box prison alone. Venom will end up in a creepy underground lab somewhere, getting prodded and poked, and they'll be stuck there until one of the experiments accidentally kills them, or until one of the lab monkeys gets too curious and pulls a Drake, and then—
EDDIE. Venom seethes up into Eddie's chest and writhes right over his heart. I WILL NOT LET THEM SEPARATE US.
"Hey, I know you don't want that. I don't want it either. But—"
Venom barks, It is not about want, and manifests over him, rising from his chest as a torso, arms and head. It is about us.
Eddie just stares up at them—at their white, unblinking eyes, at that impossible tongue, stretched out so far its brushing Eddie's chin. Venom is buzzing with some kind of feeling, brimming with it, something too chaotic for Eddie to read. Whatever it is, it's consuming and desperate and deep. It's so strong that the sensory-bleed between them is making Eddie shake.
You are mine, Eddie Brock. And that's nothing new—Venom says that kind of shit all the time. But it's different now, like it's being dragged up from some primordial, molecular plane Eddie can't even comprehend. We are us. And we will be us until the end. I will have you, or I will have nothing.
Oh.
Venom cradles Eddie's jaw in one huge hand, pressing their thumb to the corner of Eddie's mouth. I tried to tell you on the beach, but you would not understand. Your puny human brain refused to understand. You chose to laugh about it.
"No," Eddie mumbles, unable to breathe. "I didn't—"
You chose to be afraid of what I offered. What we could be.
Eddie had been terrified. For all of Anne's jokes about him messing everything up, he's not so stupid that he hasn't recognized his own feelings. But the thought of loving and being loved by something alien, something that lives inside him, something that is part of him, that knows him so intimately—it was frightening beyond belief.
It still is.
Eddie. Everything inside Eddie that's Venom turns sour and cold. They start to sink back into his chest, but Eddie reaches for them, hooking his fingers in the black webbing of their neck.
"Don't." Eddie tugs until Venom's razor-sharp teeth are grazing his cheek. "Don't leave me."
Never.
Venom pushes their thumb into Eddie's mouth, then follows it with their tongue.
It's not the first time they've done this. Far from it. In fact, the first time had been embarrassingly early on—just weeks after the rocket explosion. But it's different now, too. Venom isn't holding back anymore. Eddie can sense how deeply Venom wants to delve inside him, how they want to fill every sliver of empty space from head to toe. How they want to feel the rush of his blood and the beat of his heart and the rise and fall of his lungs. How they won't be satisfied until the two of them are so intertwined that they are practically one being.
You are still afraid.
"Yeah," Eddie admits. "Don't stop."
Eddie isn't holding back either, so Venom knows that he wants to be covered completely, to be wrapped up and held down. His clothes disappear—either ripped off or subsumed by Venom, he doesn't know. Once they're gone, Venom spreads over Eddie's chest, a gleaming black mass that rolls over him like a wave. Heavy tentacles coil down his arms and legs. A tongue pushes into his mouth again, nudging in and in and back and back until he's gagging, choking, fighting to swallow it down.
It's part of you. Part of us. A hand circles Eddie's throat, a hint of pressure right where his muscles are flexing and pulling. Give into it. Take it.
Eddie's eyes are stinging. Venom eases up long enough for him to suck in one good, shaky breath, and then the tongue is back, working in and in and in, and Eddie lets it happen, lets Venom fill him up.
They tease Eddie for a long, long time, using string-thin tendrils and a feather-light touch. Drawing up his aching dick, circling around the head, skimming over the slit, dragging back down. Eddie can't move, can barely breathe. He's left writhing against Venom's weight and whining out desperate noises around Venom's tongue. It's so much—the physical sensation, but also Venom's love, possessive to the point of danger, edged like a knife. They want to hoard all of him for themself, keep him hidden from groping hands and prying eyes.
Mine.
Eddie nods.
I would devour anyone who tried to touch you.
Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.
Liver first. Then the kidneys. Pancreas. Heart. Then the brain.
Eddie—fuck. He's going to come. He's—
Venom pulls back, leaving Eddie's arms and legs pinned but retreating everywhere else. It's so sudden that the loss leaves Eddie shivering, clawing at the sleeping bag and mumbling, "Please, please, please."
Mine, Venom growls. It's both a declaration and a warning.
Throat raw, Eddie croaks out, "Yeah."
Always.
"Always."
Us.
"Us."
Venom's possessive fervor only sharpens, deepens. A hand circles Eddie's throat again, and teeth pinprick the hinge of his jaw. A swirl of black forms around his dick—heavy and solid and thrumming. The hold on Eddie's hips eases, and he rolls up and up and up, fucking into the tight heat Venom is making for him. A tentacle slips behind his balls and starts working him open. No stretch-burn, no pain, just coaxing pressure and an inexorable fullness. Another joins it, and another, and—
Yes, love. That's ours, too. Give it to us.
Eddie comes so hard he feels it in his fucking feet. His fingernails, suddenly sharp like Venom's, tear holes in the old flannel on the sleeping bag. The pleasure reverberates through Venom, who floods it back to Eddie and then draws it back in, again and again and again, letting it loop and loop and loop until Eddie's puny human brain just gives up and shuts off.
He thinks he mumbles, "Love you," before he blacks out.
+++
Eddie wakes to near darkness. He's still on the mattress and back to being fully dressed. His mouth is dry from breathing in dust. Something shifts behind him—Venom. They're half-formed and sitting back against the wall, making just enough lap for Eddie to rest his head on. A huge hand is resting at the base of his neck.
You are awake.
Eddie says, "Yeah," around a yawn and makes himself sit up. Venom follows him, sinking back inside through his hip and side. "What time is it?"
Just after sunset. You slept almost four hours. Venom settles under Eddie's collarbones, but they're restless, uncertain. We should move on.
Before Eddie can reply, a horse whinnies outside. He glances at the window and asks, "Is that—?"
Escalante, yes. He is willing to carry us further.
Eddie's throat still feels fucked raw. It should have healed while he slept; the smugness radiating from Venom tells him they left it on purpose.
Huffing, he holds out his hand. As Venom forms one to match, he says, "Alright, Let's ride."
Pairing: Eddie/Venom
Rating: NC17
Words: ~3,100
Summary: You are mine, Eddie Brock. We are us. And we will be us until the end. I will have you, or I will have nothing.
Notes: Inspired by the Last Dance Trailer
[AO3]
As it turns out, Venom can get the horse to go really fucking fast. Eddie's barely scrambled onto the thing's back before it jolts into a breakneck gallop, its tentacle-mane writhing in the wind and its hooves churning up gritty clouds of sand. Dirt and leaves sting Eddie's sunburned skin. He's able to cling to the horse's neck while they're cutting across the flat plain of the farm, but once they hit uneven ground, he starts bouncing around like a drunken pinball, more off the horse than on.
It's been a while since Eddie's been scared of anything; with Venom inside him, he's basically indestructible. But Venom left him completely when they joined with the horse. He feels empty now—empty like everything in his chest has been scooped out, hollowed straight through to his spine—but that space is quickly filling with sheer terror.
The horse jerks to one side as it veers around a bush, nearly laying itself down like an out-of-control bike. Cursing, Eddie scrabbles around for something to hold onto.
Hey! Venom barks. Watch the ears!
Eddie starts to tell them to fuck off—he doesn't need backtalk from his asshole alien when he's this close to pissing himself—but then the horse is pushing up a sharp rise that he just knows ends in a cliff. Instead of slowing or changing course, the thing fucking bears down. Then it jumps for it, catapulting Eddie a good two hundred feet into the air before arcing down toward the valley below.
Leaving Eddie behind.
Eddie freefalls. The horse is just a black speck moving against the gray-yellow-brown of the Chihuahuan Desert, and the ground is coming up fast. It's almost funny: Eddie spent his journalism career chasing stories through drug dens and abandoned warehouses and dirty back alleys, and then Venom found him, and they started seeking out muggers and traffickers and killers, the type of people a sane man would deliberately avoid. He came through all of that with just a few bruises and scrapes, and he survived two vicious battles against stronger symbiotes, one of those on top of a fucking rocket. Now he's going to die from falling off a horse.
And Venom—Venom will die, too. The horse might hold them for a few more hours, and that might give them enough time to reach the nearest pueblo. But no one there will be their perfect match, not like Eddie is. They'll have to hop between hosts every couple of days, maybe every couple of hours, and—
Eddie! Hold on!
Hysterically, Eddie thinks, Hold on to what?
Thick tentacles shoot up from the horse and seize Eddie by the arms. For a moment or two, he's suspended in midair. Then he's yanked onto the horse's back so forcefully that something snaps in his left thigh. After a few agonizing bounces, the horse finds flat ground again and its gait evens out. More tentacles wrap around Eddie's waist, pinning him down.
I've got you, Eddie. I've got us.
Eddie hunches against the horse's neck and tries to breathe through the white-hot pain in his leg.
+++
Roughly an hour later, they stop in the middle of what looks like an abandoned ranch. As Eddie sits up straight, he sees a corral with a collapsing fence and a field that's overgrown with yucca and scrub. A few forgotten bales of hay are withering in the sun. A short distance away, an 80s Toyota truck is hitched to a dented aluminum horse trailer. The trailer's tires are flat, and the truck is covered in rust.
Eddie's fingers are numb from white-knuckling the horse's mane. He flexes them as he asks, "Where are we?"
No idea. But we must walk from here. The animal cannot take much more of us.
The land is flat and open, leaving them far more exposed than Eddie is comfortable with, considering that the assholes chasing them have helicopters at their disposal. He gives serious thought to sheltering in the trailer—at least long enough for Venom to heal his leg—but after another look around, he spots a small cabin or shed hidden in the shade of a cottonwood tree.
"There," he says, pointing.
The horse heads for the cabin at a slow walk. Its breathing is labored now, its chest heaving and Venom's huge tongue lolling from its mouth. Foam is dripping from both of its nostrils, spattering onto the dirt. As it stops beneath the cottonwood, it lets out a thin, pained whine. The tentacles wrapped around Eddie tighten. He's lifted up and set on his feet.
Well, his foot. He stands like a flamingo while he waits for Venom to hop back inside him. When it doesn't happen immediately, he touches the horse's flank and asks, "What are you doing?"
Fixing the damage I caused.
Eddie shrugs out of his button-down and uses it to wipe the sweat and dirt from his face and neck and arms. It's hot as hell; the late-afternoon sun is low in the sky and blazing a bright, furious orange. Eddie squints as he watches the horizon. He tells himself that the shimmers he sees are heat mirages, not more fucking helicopters.
Eventually, Venom makes a deep, satisfied sound and curves a thin tendril around Eddie's wrist. They jump into Eddie in a sudden, seething rush, and it's such a relief to have them back—to have that empty space filled up—that an embarrassing noise catches in Eddie's throat. Venom spreads through every part of Eddie: pulsing up and down his arms, curling around and around his chest, chasing up and down his legs. After a few cautious ripples in Eddie's injured thigh, they slide up to their favorite place—underneath Eddie's collarbones.
"Is it going to make it?"
His name is Escalante. And he will live. He just needs rest. After a pause, Venom adds, So do you. Your leg is broken.
"Yeah, I noticed."
Venom mutters something that sounds suspiciously like pussy and wraps themself around Eddie's leg from hip to ankle. It's enough support that Eddie can waddle over to the cabin.
Inside, it isn't much. The ranchers had probably used it as a place to rest during the worst heat of the day; the thick adobe walls have brought the temperature down a good fifteen degrees. A low couch is bleeding stuffing on one side of the single room, and a mattress is gathering dust on the other. A table is sitting between them, its top scattered with bits of metal that might be from a broken stirrup. A grimy length of rope is hanging from one of the two chairs. Several fat ceramic pots are lined up underneath the only window, their painted patterns faded from the sun.
Lie down.
"Where?"
On the bed. Obviously.
"Obviously," Eddie scoffs, giving the mattress a more thorough look. An old sleeping bag is open on top of it, flannel side up. Judging by the dust, it hasn't been touched in well over a year. "Lift it up first."
Why?
"Because we're in the desert! Or did you forget about the scorpion in my boot?"
How could I forget? You screamed about it for fifteen minutes.
"That's because it was a scorpion! In my boot!"
Venom heaves out a sigh that rumbles behind Eddie's ribs. They wind down Eddie's arms and beyond and use their giant hands to hoist one end of the mattress off the floor. Sure enough, a rattlesnake rears up from the space between the mattress and the wall, irate and hissing. Sighing again, Venom splits a tentacle off the closest arm and catches the thing just below the head. They observe it for a moment—a long moment Eddie spends squirming to avoid its thrashing tail—then abruptly join with it, turning about half of it black.
Eddie yelps, "Jesus Christ," and squirms some more. "What are you doing?"
I'm telling it to go away. Venom reaches the tentacle through the doorway and drops the snake in the scrub. It promptly—and thankfully—slithers off. Happy now, you big baby?
"Yes."
Venom sighs again, but this time, it's more fond than irritable. They help lower Eddie to the mattress and rumble, Rest, meatsack.
The sleeping bag smells musty, but with Venom inside him, the dust that clouds up as he stretches out only tickles his nose for a few seconds. He shifts until he's somewhat comfortable and closes his eyes. He should rest; fatigue is pretty much the only thing Venom can't fix. But his brain is going a mile a minute. The last eighteen hours keep flashing behind his eyes like a fucked-up movie.
He says, "I want to know who's chasing us," and scrubs a hand through his hair. It's dirty enough to be itchy; he needs a shower so badly he can taste it. "At first, I thought it was 'cause of the jailbreak. I wouldn't put it past Mulligan to extradite me out of spite. He's just that kind of asshole, you know? But…"
But…
"No way these guys are cops. Not with those weapons. They've got to be military. Black ops."
Secret government shit. Area 51.
"Yeah." Eddie tests his bad leg by flexing his foot. His thigh aches a little, but it's nothing compared to the pain he felt when the bone first broke. "Area 51."
Someone saw us.
"Probably." Cell footage of their street fight with Drake's goons had gone up on YouTube about a month after the rocket exploded, but when Anne heard about it, she'd made it disappear. Eddie's been afraid to ask how. "Cameras everywhere these days. Even in small towns."
Eddie. Venom creeps down into Eddie's gut and churns there, prickly and sour. You tried to warn us.
"Wait, wait, wait." Smirking, Eddie leans up on his elbows. "Are you… are you actually admitting that you were wrong?"
Venom says, Don't get used to it, asshole, with their usual attitude, but they sink deeper into Eddie's gut and churn a little more.
Eddie can feel Venom's remorse, and that's enough. He rests his hand on his belly, right where they're restless and unhappy, and pats there until they well up through his t-shirt and form a hand for him to hold.
He says, "This is on both of us. We've been careless."
We did not always have a choice.
Before Eddie ditched his phone, Dan had texted him a link to a Chronicle article telling the "official" story about the night they fought Carnage. According to SFPD, film students accidentally damaged the cathedral during a guerilla movie shoot, and the "monsters" caught on news cameras were just actors in costumes. As a cover, it was just dumb enough to fool most of the public, but it had holes in it. Too many holes to trick any federal agencies that really bothered to really look.
But they hadn't had a choice. If they hadn't showed up to Carnage's playdate, the symbiote would've forced them into a confrontation somewhere else, and the local news stations would've aired that footage instead.
"We'll move on," Eddie decides. They can try for Veracruz, maybe catch a boat to the Caribbean. "Lie low."
Eddie. I will protect us.
Eddie squeezes Venom's hand. "I know, buddy. You always do."
I will not let them separate us.
Eddie says, "Yeah," but he's not sure he believes it.
The truth is, that's probably what these assholes want. They might "observe" him for a while, just to see how he and Venom work together, but once they get bored of that, they'll shuffle him off to some black box prison alone. Venom will end up in a creepy underground lab somewhere, getting prodded and poked, and they'll be stuck there until one of the experiments accidentally kills them, or until one of the lab monkeys gets too curious and pulls a Drake, and then—
EDDIE. Venom seethes up into Eddie's chest and writhes right over his heart. I WILL NOT LET THEM SEPARATE US.
"Hey, I know you don't want that. I don't want it either. But—"
Venom barks, It is not about want, and manifests over him, rising from his chest as a torso, arms and head. It is about us.
Eddie just stares up at them—at their white, unblinking eyes, at that impossible tongue, stretched out so far its brushing Eddie's chin. Venom is buzzing with some kind of feeling, brimming with it, something too chaotic for Eddie to read. Whatever it is, it's consuming and desperate and deep. It's so strong that the sensory-bleed between them is making Eddie shake.
You are mine, Eddie Brock. And that's nothing new—Venom says that kind of shit all the time. But it's different now, like it's being dragged up from some primordial, molecular plane Eddie can't even comprehend. We are us. And we will be us until the end. I will have you, or I will have nothing.
Oh.
Venom cradles Eddie's jaw in one huge hand, pressing their thumb to the corner of Eddie's mouth. I tried to tell you on the beach, but you would not understand. Your puny human brain refused to understand. You chose to laugh about it.
"No," Eddie mumbles, unable to breathe. "I didn't—"
You chose to be afraid of what I offered. What we could be.
Eddie had been terrified. For all of Anne's jokes about him messing everything up, he's not so stupid that he hasn't recognized his own feelings. But the thought of loving and being loved by something alien, something that lives inside him, something that is part of him, that knows him so intimately—it was frightening beyond belief.
It still is.
Eddie. Everything inside Eddie that's Venom turns sour and cold. They start to sink back into his chest, but Eddie reaches for them, hooking his fingers in the black webbing of their neck.
"Don't." Eddie tugs until Venom's razor-sharp teeth are grazing his cheek. "Don't leave me."
Never.
Venom pushes their thumb into Eddie's mouth, then follows it with their tongue.
It's not the first time they've done this. Far from it. In fact, the first time had been embarrassingly early on—just weeks after the rocket explosion. But it's different now, too. Venom isn't holding back anymore. Eddie can sense how deeply Venom wants to delve inside him, how they want to fill every sliver of empty space from head to toe. How they want to feel the rush of his blood and the beat of his heart and the rise and fall of his lungs. How they won't be satisfied until the two of them are so intertwined that they are practically one being.
You are still afraid.
"Yeah," Eddie admits. "Don't stop."
Eddie isn't holding back either, so Venom knows that he wants to be covered completely, to be wrapped up and held down. His clothes disappear—either ripped off or subsumed by Venom, he doesn't know. Once they're gone, Venom spreads over Eddie's chest, a gleaming black mass that rolls over him like a wave. Heavy tentacles coil down his arms and legs. A tongue pushes into his mouth again, nudging in and in and back and back until he's gagging, choking, fighting to swallow it down.
It's part of you. Part of us. A hand circles Eddie's throat, a hint of pressure right where his muscles are flexing and pulling. Give into it. Take it.
Eddie's eyes are stinging. Venom eases up long enough for him to suck in one good, shaky breath, and then the tongue is back, working in and in and in, and Eddie lets it happen, lets Venom fill him up.
They tease Eddie for a long, long time, using string-thin tendrils and a feather-light touch. Drawing up his aching dick, circling around the head, skimming over the slit, dragging back down. Eddie can't move, can barely breathe. He's left writhing against Venom's weight and whining out desperate noises around Venom's tongue. It's so much—the physical sensation, but also Venom's love, possessive to the point of danger, edged like a knife. They want to hoard all of him for themself, keep him hidden from groping hands and prying eyes.
Mine.
Eddie nods.
I would devour anyone who tried to touch you.
Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.
Liver first. Then the kidneys. Pancreas. Heart. Then the brain.
Eddie—fuck. He's going to come. He's—
Venom pulls back, leaving Eddie's arms and legs pinned but retreating everywhere else. It's so sudden that the loss leaves Eddie shivering, clawing at the sleeping bag and mumbling, "Please, please, please."
Mine, Venom growls. It's both a declaration and a warning.
Throat raw, Eddie croaks out, "Yeah."
Always.
"Always."
Us.
"Us."
Venom's possessive fervor only sharpens, deepens. A hand circles Eddie's throat again, and teeth pinprick the hinge of his jaw. A swirl of black forms around his dick—heavy and solid and thrumming. The hold on Eddie's hips eases, and he rolls up and up and up, fucking into the tight heat Venom is making for him. A tentacle slips behind his balls and starts working him open. No stretch-burn, no pain, just coaxing pressure and an inexorable fullness. Another joins it, and another, and—
Yes, love. That's ours, too. Give it to us.
Eddie comes so hard he feels it in his fucking feet. His fingernails, suddenly sharp like Venom's, tear holes in the old flannel on the sleeping bag. The pleasure reverberates through Venom, who floods it back to Eddie and then draws it back in, again and again and again, letting it loop and loop and loop until Eddie's puny human brain just gives up and shuts off.
He thinks he mumbles, "Love you," before he blacks out.
+++
Eddie wakes to near darkness. He's still on the mattress and back to being fully dressed. His mouth is dry from breathing in dust. Something shifts behind him—Venom. They're half-formed and sitting back against the wall, making just enough lap for Eddie to rest his head on. A huge hand is resting at the base of his neck.
You are awake.
Eddie says, "Yeah," around a yawn and makes himself sit up. Venom follows him, sinking back inside through his hip and side. "What time is it?"
Just after sunset. You slept almost four hours. Venom settles under Eddie's collarbones, but they're restless, uncertain. We should move on.
Before Eddie can reply, a horse whinnies outside. He glances at the window and asks, "Is that—?"
Escalante, yes. He is willing to carry us further.
Eddie's throat still feels fucked raw. It should have healed while he slept; the smugness radiating from Venom tells him they left it on purpose.
Huffing, he holds out his hand. As Venom forms one to match, he says, "Alright, Let's ride."