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indigo

pairing: Eddie Brock/Reader/Venom Symbiote/Agony Symbiote

reader's pronouns are they/them; race and gender are ambiguous and no physical descriptors are used

summary: “You’re….” Eddie chokes out, not wanting to get his hopes up. But he recognizes the fatigue in your eyes; the tension in your shoulders; and the hidden synchronicity stringing you together. “Like you?” An alien voice growls. A deep blue mass stretches across your face, seeping through your cheekbones and down your neck. You bare your teeth and Eddie is surprised to see inhumanly long sharpened teeth and a drooling tongue. The sight is painfully familiar: it appears nearly identical to Venom, save for the color. In the blink of an eye, the mass is gone, leaving you to stare at him with a sympathetic smile. “Yes.”

word count: 4.2k | ao3 version

I did some research on the wiki and watched a few clips of the movie, but that’s the extent of my canon knowledge. As such, this won’t be canon compliant.

In this fic, the reader (you) is an experiment of the Life Foundation. Dr. Drake decides to try bonding you with a symbiote. While the union works, it ultimately backfires for him—as you manage to make your escape and go into hiding with the symbiote. Without a symbiote to bond to her, Dr. Skirth ends up living… and once Eddie escapes from the facility, she introduces the two of you.

warnings: canon-typical blood, violence, gore, cannibalism, and human experimentation; vomiting and sickness

There’s someone Dr. Skirth wants Eddie to meet. He hates meeting new people, but he owes Dora a favor, so he agrees to meet up with you in the park under the cover of night. Eddie doesn’t know anything about you, other than the fact that you’re a friend of a friend. According to Dora, you’re also tied to the Life Foundation (how that connection manifests, Eddie isn’t sure). Honestly, Eddie just hopes his meeting with you will be useful. Meanwhile, Venom is, understandably, skeptical about the meeting. They make sure to complain to him several times as he makes his way to the park, and they are only satiated with the promise that they can eat you if you somehow turn out to be a villain. 

Unfortunately for Venom, you don’t appear to be a villain. Rather, you’re wearing deceptively casual clothing: a simple sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers. Your hands are shoved in your pockets; there are dark circles under your eyes and you’re staring down at the cracks in the pavement as you stand under a flickering streetlight. There are scars marking nearly every visible part of you—stretching up your collarbone, running down your face, laced across your hands. One thing is abundantly clear to Eddie in that moment: Life Foundation has left its mark on you, too. 

If you sense him staring, you don’t comment on it. Instead, you just look up and send him a hesitant wave. “Hi,” you say, extending a hand to shake as you introduce yourself. Eddie blinks at you for a moment, before introducing himself in return. After a second, he takes your proffered hand and shakes it firmly. His eyes catch on your cracked knuckles and everything seems to fall into place. It appears you’re far more similar to Eddie than he first thought. 

“You’re….” He finds himself choking out, not wanting to get his hopes up. But he recognizes the fatigue in your eyes; the tension in your shoulders; and the hidden synchronicity stringing you together. 

“Like you?” An alien voice growls. A deep blue mass stretches across your face, seeping through your cheekbones and down your neck. You bare your teeth and Eddie is surprised to see inhumanly long sharpened teeth and a drooling tongue. The sight is painfully familiar: it appears nearly identical to Venom, save for the color. In the blink of an eye, the mass is gone, leaving you to stare at him with a sympathetic smile. “Yes.”

Eddie stares at you in disbelief, amazed by your composure. Right now, he feels as if Venom is in complete control. Yet you seem able to switch between your symbiote and your own visage at will. It’s as if the two of you are in complete agreement. “How…?” He trails off. 

Half of your face is overtaken with the alien entity. “We are Agony.” A warped voice responds, a blend of your voice and the alien’s. Slowly, the alien—Agony—drips down your face and disappears from sight. You’re staring at him with a patient expression now. “We can help you.” You state matter-of-factly. 

Eddie isn’t sure what to do with that offer. He finds himself mechanically proceeding through the rest of the conversation, just barely staying afloat amidst the realization that there may actually be someone willing to help him. A few days ago, Eddie would’ve maintained that he didn’t need help;today, he’s grateful for the offer of assistance that he knows he needs. He has no idea how to navigate this tumultuous new existence he finds himself sharing with the alien creature inside him. 

He locks eyes with you, and an unspoken understanding passes between the both of you. There is a visceral fuzzy feeling in Eddie’s chest, as he stares into the eyes of the one person who could ever truly understand his new life. You stare right back at him, evidently having similar thoughts. The two of you are tied together by fate and its cruelties; you have virtually no choice but to lean on one another, lest you both return to your loneliness. 

Eddie leaves twenty minutes later with your number in his phone and plans to meet with you the next morning. He’s fairly hopeful about it—from what he could tell, you seem like a genuinely kind person. Worn thin from the trials you’ve been forced into, but kind nonetheless. Eddie tries to puzzle out how you could still have sympathy for a world that has shown you nothing but malice. 

“Don’t trust them.” Venom growls, breaking Eddie out of his thoughts. He feels the symbiote’s restless energy humming along his skin, creating goosebumps that run down his arms as he walks home.

Whether Venom’s remark is a profession of their suspicion or a warning, Eddie isn’t sure. He sighs. “Let’s give them a chance,” Eddie maintains, shoving his hands in his pockets as he continues down the street. “If they somehow turn out to be evil, you can eat them. Okay?” 

Venom is silent for a while. “Fine.” They eventually respond, clearly not happy about it. But the renewed promise of food must be too good for them to turn down. 

Eddie nods, secretly relieved. Admittedly, he’s pretty optimistic about you: you appear healthy, sane, and most importantly, comfortable in your own body. You don’t appear to be constantly at war with yourself, which is rather similar to how Eddie feels at the current moment.

“War,” Venom remarks. There’s no telling whether they possess the same spectrum of emotions that humans do, yet they’re speaking with clear sarcasm. “Very dramatic, Eddie.” Eddie just rolls his eyes. 

The rest of his day passes without much fanfare. He eats a rather bland dinner and falls asleep earlier than normal, if only to quiet his restless thoughts. Before long, it’s the next morning—and he’s freshening up before heading out to the diner you agreed to meet at. 

You’re waiting for him in a brightly-colored booth. Eddie walks over to you, muttering a greeting as he takes the seat across from you. You slide a coffee mug over to him, which he drinks gratefully. His curiosity seems to linger in the air around both of you, until you’re relenting and telling Eddie about yourself. He told you about himself when you met last night; now, it’s your turn to tell your story. 

What Eddie hears is enough to turn his stomach and effectively rid him of his appetite. Essentially, you were one of the human captives used as experiments by the Life Foundation. You describe a constant state of numbness at war with dread and fear. You explain how you were practically left to rot behind those glass walls, until it came time for you to be the next test subject. You recount how you were exposed to the blue symbiote… and how, upon your successful union, Life Foundation planned to experiment on you further. By the time you’re describing your escape, Eddie is resisting the urge to reach out and place a hand over your shaking one—desperate to provide comfort to the one person who understands what it’s like to have a parasite living inside them. 

“Not a parasite,” Venom hisses, breaking Eddie out of his thoughts. They sound strangely offended by the remark.

“Right, they don’t like being called that,” you murmur, tapping your fingers rhythmically against the table. Eddie blinks, thrown back into reality. “Symbiote is better.” Agony interjects. You seem entirely unbothered by the interruption. 

An awkward silence descends across the space for a moment, before Eddie blurts out the first thought that comes to mind. “I’m hungry,” Eddie frowns. Indeed, his stomach aches with emptiness—despite his knowledge that he ate just before falling asleep the previous night. 

“We’re hungry.” Venom corrects him. 

You’re looking at him— them, Eddie reminds himself—with amusement. The expression is fleeting. “Right,” you then say, as if you’re just remembering. A grimace rises on your face. “Well. There are two options: chocolate… and human brains.”

Eddie stares at you warily. He didn’t think you were the type to joke about things like this, but it just sounds too far fetched to be real. He must’ve misjudged you, somehow. As if sensing his doubt, you attempt to explain further. 

“I know, I was skeptical too,” you admit, rubbing a hand over your face. While your relationship with Agony seems a lot more clearly defined than Eddie and Venom’s, there’s still a lingering exhaustion written in the lines of your face. You take a slow breath. “Their species requires different nutrients than ours: namely, phenethylamine.” 

“Human brains are better.” Agony states. 

You sigh. “It’s true. Chocolate is really only a temporary fix, because it doesn’t last nearly as long. The two of us have struck up an agreement to only eat bad people, so there’s at least a bit of morality involved...” You break off, clearly sensing Eddie’s impending dread. 

There’s no way around eating humans. It takes him several seconds to process this. Eddie doesn’t want to believe it—doesn’t want to think about the feeling of human matter stuck between his hooked teeth; doesn’t want to think about waking up in the morning, sweat-soaked and stained with the dried blood of a dead stranger. 

“I’m sorry,” you say, your brows furrowed. Eddie hates how sincere you are. And he especially hates how he takes comfort from your reassurance. It shouldn’t mean anything to him—he never cares what people think of him. But the fact that you can not only sympathize with him, but also empathize with him, is rather significant. 

“We can do this,” you promise him. Eddie finds himself oddly appreciative of your choice of wording. You chose to say “we,” as if explicitly confirming your support for him. “We’ll help you.” You repeat. 

“Okay,” he responds stiffly, not trusting himself to say anything else. The two—four—of you spend the rest of the meal in silence. Eventually, the warm sunlight trickles through the windows next to you and breakfast is over. Eddie and you leave the restaurant and stop on the sidewalk outside, turning towards one another. 

“I’ll text you,” you promise. “Let me know if you need anything.” Eddie nods quietly. As if sensing how overwhelmed he feels, your expression morphs into one oddly reminiscent of… affection. “Take care of yourself, okay?” Eddie assents and tells you to do the same, at which a smile rises on your lips. Oddly short of breath, Eddie manages to tear his eyes away and utter a goodbye—though your smile remains in his thoughts for the rest of the day. 

Eddie begins to make progress, slowly but surely. With your guidance, he learns how to communicate better with Venom; fight with their assistance; and even nourish himself better. None of it seems to be important, in the face of the realization that his life will never return back to normal. But, somehow, the satisfied smile on your face when he accomplishes something is enough for Eddie to keep pushing himself. 

Since your first meeting, Venom has warmed up to you a lot more—to the point where they have started speaking to you directly, instead of just speaking to Eddie. Agony has still remained a bit more withdrawn and silent, but their presence is keenly felt regardless. 

Eddie still has moments when he feels as if the world is caving in on him—as if the faces of passerby are contorted in disgust and fear (which was an unfortunate reality in the beginning days of his union with Venom). There are nights when he wakes with dried blood flecked across his skin, but he has grown accustomed to washing it off and forgetting it in the morning. You are a constant companion during these moments, and, sometimes, your touch is the only thing that grounds Eddie to the world around him. Safe to say, the two of you have taken to staying at each other’s apartments more often than not. 

On a few rare occasions, Eddie is the one to hold you—as you remember confinement behind cold glass walls and calculating eyes watching your every move. Eddie can’t imagine what your captivity and torture at the hands of Life Foundation was like… And he’s certain he doesn’t want to think about it, because it will only make him feel even worse. While you’ve both been bonded with symbiotes, Eddie escaped the cruel experimentation that you were subjected to. He was just visiting to get information for an article; you were bound in chains and thrown behind nearly impenetrable barriers. 

Overall, though, things are going well. At least, Eddie wants to think so. But then the universe wants to spite him, and he wakes up one morning feeling as if he was hit by a truck. He’s practically stuck to the cushions of his couch, his limbs as heavy as bricks. His throat is overwhelmingly dry; there’s a bitter taste in his mouth; and, try as he might, he can’t seem to wrench his eyes open. 

“Eddie? …Eddie? Shit.” 

Eddie wakes to a frigid cold. He shivers instinctually, blinking past a strange sheen over his eyelids. It takes his vision several moments to clarify past a swirling blur. His temple is nearly pulsating with pain; his stomach aches and his skin is coated in sweat. Eddie twitches, recognizing your blurry silhouette and realizing you must’ve dumped cold water on him to wake him up. Even now, as he’s been torn from sleep, he’s struggling to stay awake. 

“Eddie?” You ask, sounding very concerned. Eddie isn’t sure he can remember the last time someone was so worried about him. The thought saddens him. Your hands move to his shoulders and you shake him slightly, your brows furrowed. “Can you hear me?” The most Eddie can manage is a weak nod in response. 

“Doesn’t… feel right.” Venom adds. This may be the first time Eddie has ever agreed with Venom.

“Eddie’s sick,” you respond to the symbiote. 

Eddie isn’t able to register much more of your conversation with Venom—not when his ears are ringing and he feels a familiar prickling nausea at the back of his throat. Eddie slowly pushes himself up. Upon realizing that the feeling is steadily climbing up his throat, he clumsily gets to his feet and stumbles towards the bathroom, just barely making it to the toilet before vomiting. Eddie can’t quite comprehend what’s happening, other than the burning sensation assaulting his throat and the sudden feel of someone rubbing his back reassuringly. You’re crouching next to him, saying something he can’t make out. Venom responds for him. 

At some point, he stops throwing up and attempts to rest his head. You put the toilet seat down and flush it, before allowing him to do so. Eddie feels a foreign gratitude for the kindness you’re showing him, despite the monster living inside him. The cold porcelain is a welcome sensation on his sweat-soaked skin. 

“Not a monster,” Venom reminds him. Even his companion’s voice is quieter, as if accommodating the headache migrating through his temple and down into his cheekbones and jaw. Eddie doesn’t have the energy to argue. He blinks slowly, the lights of the bathroom only making his headache worse. He feels rather woozy. 

“Here, let’s get you up,” you suggest. Eddie can hardly move, yet your hands bracket his arms and you’re pulling him up as if he weighs nothing at all. (That is likely due to Agony’s help, but he doesn’t exactly have the wherewithal to recognize that). Eddie lurches to the side ominously, but Venom extends a makeshift arm and rights his balance. With Agony, Venom, and you combined, Eddie makes it back to the couch easily. You help him sit down before walking into the kitchen. You return moments later to press a glass of water into his hand. 

Eddie gulps it down greedily. Or, at least, he tries to—only for you to reach out and stop him from drinking any more. “Not too fast,” you remark, taking the glass from his hand and placing it on the adjacent coffee table. “Wait ten minutes or so, just to make sure you can keep it down.”

Eddie stares at you for a long moment, frowning. He hears himself blurting out his thoughts before he can think any better of it.“Why are you here?” Eddie croaks. He is the complete opposite of presentable at the moment; the last thing he wants is for you of all people to see him looking so pathetic. Eddie isn’t exactly sure why he wants to make such a good impression on you, but… he supposes that doesn’t matter now. He can muse on the exact nature of his feelings towards you at a later date, when he doesn’t feel so uncomfortable in his own skin. 

You blink at him for a moment, evidently contemplating the question. “Alone.” Agony responds. Eddie squints at you, watching as the symbiote’s midnight blue mass crawls up your shoulders, as if wrapping an arm around you in reassurance. You don’t even flinch at the sudden presence of your companion. Instead, you take a slow breath and look at Eddie once more. “When it happened to me, I was alone. It was… an isolating experience. I don’t want you to feel the same way.” You explain. 

You then reach down, as if to touch him, only for Venom to protrude from Eddie’s shoulder and snap at you. At least, they attempt to—only for Agony to intercept them and snap threateningly in return. Eddie watches the whole scene through hazy eyes, half-convinced that he’s having a fever dream. Eventually, Agony and Venom seem to resolve their dispute and you reach out towards Eddie again, placing your hand on his forehead to check for his temperature. Eddie can’t stop himself from sighing in relief at your cool skin. You only frown, looking more worried. “You’re burning up,” you say to him. 

“Hot.” Venom adds, clearly feeling a bit of Eddie’s own discomfort. “Like flames.” 

“He has a fever,” you respond, getting to your feet and moving to the kitchen once more. You come back moments later with a towel in hand. Eddie dazedly watches as you approach, folding the towel before placing it on his forehead. He exhales slowly as the cold fabric brings a welcome sensation of frigidity trickling down his temple, fighting off the flames licking at his skin. He’s not sure how long he sits in silence until you’re breaking through it. “Here, it’s been ten minutes. Can you sit up a bit?” You ask. 

Eddie lets out a pained whimper, practically sinking back into the cushions of the couch. Venom stretches out of his back and props him up to a sitting position. Thank you, Eddie thinks. Then the symbiote rises to grasp his forearm, guiding him to grip the glass of water and take another sip. Venom and you then help him return to a reclined position. 

Eddie’s eyelids are stinging with exhaustion. He’s desperately fighting off sleep—blinking tiredly with extra effort. “It’s okay, you can rest,” you reassure him, noticing his fatigue. “We’ll be here when you wake.” 

That comforts him far more than he’d like to admit. Before long, Eddie is slipping into sleep once more. 

“Cared for you,” Venom says days later, when Eddie has mostly recovered. They’re sharing a quiet moment in Eddie’s apartment, sitting on the couch and staring at the television on low-volume. “For us.”

Thinking about his sickness last week, Eddie can’t help but feel humiliated and weak. He’s still embarrassed that you saw him in such a state; frustrated that he needed assistance with even the simplest of tasks; and… grateful, despite it all. You stuck with him in the following few days, giving him medication when needed and ensuring he had enough to eat and drink. You were a constant presence, to the point where Eddie found you asleep on the armchair in his living room numerous times. That sight will be forever burned into his brain: the peaceful expression on your face as your chest rose and fell calmly. He had never seen you look so vulnerable before; and even in the midst of his sickness and the ensuing vulnerability he was forced to show, he felt himself wanting to protect you. It was a foolish thought: Eddie knew you were more than capable of protecting yourself. But perhaps it was just the domesticity of it all—the thought of you becoming a permanent fixture in their life. 

Venom breaks him from his thoughts with a gentle tap at his wrist. Eddie recalls their prior statement and hums. “They did care for us,” he agrees. Venom crawls down his forearm, stretching to inhabit the space between his fingers in what he assumes to be an imitation of hand-holding. There’s an unsettled energy to the symbiote’s presence. Eddie feels a frown overtake his lips. “What’s wrong?”

“It was too quiet.” Venom’s confession settles in the air around him, inhabiting every nook and cranny of his dimly-lit apartment. 

“Sorry,” Eddie eventually murmurs. He’s not sure why he’s apologizing, when the sickness wasn’t under his control. But that tone in Venom’s voice provokes guilt and remorse in him, for reasons he can’t quite elucidate. 

“Don’t do it again.” Venom commands. 

“I don’t really have control over that,” Eddie huffs, attempting to diffuse the sudden tension that settled over the space. Venom lets out a threatening growling noise and he quickly caves. “Fine, fine. I’ll try.”

“Try.” Venom repeats, equal amounts of wry amusement and frustration in their voice. Eddie just hums in response, grasping the symbiote’s tendrils with renewed vigor. Now that he thinks about it, Venom seemed uncharacteristically withdrawn during his sickness: as if they were afraid of pushing him too far past the brink of his energy.

“Sorry,” Eddie whispers again. Venom tightens their grip on his hand in response, and the two of them sit there for a long time after—hands conjoined and fates lovingly intertwined. 

Eddie doesn’t get a chance to thank you until a few days later, when he’s sure his sickness is gone and can safely dismiss the thought of getting you sick. Eddie and Venom meet Agony and you as the sun sets over the horizon, in the same spot where you first met all that time ago. 

Standing under the flickering street light in the park once more, Eddie is unspeakably thankful that he took a chance on you. He can’t imagine where he would be now, without your support. The thought dominates his mind, to the point where he finds himself uttering it aloud moments later. “I don’t know what I would do without you,” Eddie says. 

“You’d be just fine,” you remark with a smile. The way you look at him only adds more fuel to the fire of Eddie’s foolish hopes. When he sees that gleam in your eyes, he can’t help but envision a shared existence: not among two beings, but among four. The thought is misguided and horribly insistent, popping up during the most inopportune of moments. 

Eddie sighs. “I’m serious,” he maintains, trying to convey his sincerity. It seems to work, because you pause and look at him with widening eyes. “I- I couldn’t have done this alone. We couldn’t have done this alone.” Eddie corrects himself, when he can sense Venom about to object. The symbiote drags a tendril down his ribs, in an approving movement that makes his heart race. 

“I’m happy I met you,” you admit. “Selfishly speaking.” Agony crawls up your skin and pops out of your shoulder; Venom does the same, and the two have a conversation in a chittering language that Eddie and you can’t hope to understand. Meanwhile, Eddie is unable to deny your magnetic presence; he can’t help but gravitate towards you. He takes a step closer—past a socially acceptable distance—and stops, trying to study your expression and ascertain your comfort. Eventually, he surrenders and decides to just speak his thoughts.

“Can I…?” Eddie breaks off, unsure of what he’s asking for at the present moment. His thoughts are quickly cascading into a territory far past platonic companionship, but suppressing them is a lost cause. He’s spent too long denying himself the life he wants. Venom crawls up his chest and stretches across his shoulders in a reassuring gesture. Comforted by the reminder of Venom’s presence, Eddie clears his throat and summons the courage to finish his sentence. “Can I kiss you?”

You take a step closer, rendering the distance between the two of you nearly nonexistent. Your hand falls to his forearm and Eddie looks into your eyes, a nervous anticipation running through him as he sees you nod in agreement. “Yes.” You whisper, so quietly that Eddie nearly convinces himself that he imagined it. But before he can second-guess himself, you’re closing the gap between you and kissing him. 

You’re standing so close together that the two of you are practically fusing. Eddie’s hands fall to your waist; your hands cradle his jaw. Agony and Venom prickle along their partners’ shoulders, dripping down your chests and mixing together. Distantly, Eddie remembers how lost and alone he felt when Venom first fused with him. He has long grown out of the feeling, and wonders if, perhaps, that sensation was trying to tell him something. Perhaps, this entire time, existence was meant to be shared amongst three others—rather than just one. 

These philosophical thoughts quickly fade to the back of his mind, as your fingers trace his jaw and slip down to the nape of his neck. Venom rises to meet your hand, just as Agony trickles down your side and runs along Eddie’s knuckles. One realization immediately takes precedence over everything else running through Eddie’s mind: 

He’s never felt so alive.

endnotes: this is definitely the queerest fic I've ever written. and I love it.

Me: I can hardly write kissing scenes with two people. My writer’s brain, cackling: Hear me out. What about… two people and two symbiotes? Me: What. The. Fuck.

thanks for reading! <3

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