Chapter Text
Venom tossed one of the bad guys with precision, right into Parker’s web. Just hang around a moment, we’ll get to you soon, the symbiote growled.
Tony could just barely hear the sweet sound of Eddie’s voice underneath. Sometimes he didn’t really know if Eddie and Venom shared a brain as well as most of a body. It didn’t matter, he loved them both. But sometimes he wondered what it must be like, to share himself so utterly. It didn’t matter. Venom pronounced Eddie the best possible host and aside from a few moments of first aid, didn’t really bother to inhabit anyone else.
“That’s it, you and Webhead aren’t allowed to have playdates anymore,” Tony said through their coms. “You’re starting to talk like each other.”
“Aw, Mr. Stark--” Parker started to protest and then took a missile to the chest.
Tony tried not to wince. Parker was a lot tougher than he looked -- he’d almost have to be, really -- and the missiles were scavenged from Justin Hammer’s factories, so they were crappy missiles to start with. He might, however, have repulsored that bad guy with a little extra prejudice.
“Rude,” Lady Thor said, whizzing through the air, tugged by Mjolnir. “Pick on someone your own size.”
The bad guy decided that discretion was the better part of valor and tried to run. Tried, because his own size -- aka She-Hulk -- grabbed him by the pants for a truly heroic wedgie and hung him up next to his cohort.
“So that’s a wrap, right boss?”
Friday did a quick scan, grabbing data from all of Parker’s spiderbots and the neighboring traffic cams. “All the scumbags are accounted for, boss.”
“Scumbags? Have you been watching cop shows again?”
“The Rookie,” Friday confirmed. “Can’t help it, boss. Nathan Fillion has a great ass.”
Tony about choked on his tongue. “I didn’t know you were interested. I can probably talk to him, get him to drop by.”
“Oh, would you?” Friday gushed like a schoolgirl with a crush.
“Friday says there’s no remaining scumbags,” Tony said. “Jane, can you do a spin--”
“Calm thy tits, Tony, I’m on it,” Jane said, and Mjolnir threw her up into the air. There had been rather a mob of bad guys, and several more had popped out midway through the melee, so it was hard to tell if they’d actually gotten them all.
Everyone would feel better with a thorough check.
They hadn’t been particularly dangerous for Avengers, but they weren’t the kind of rabble one wanted on the streets, armed with substandard, Chitauri-modified weaponry. Hammer kept mucking with stuff he didn’t understand, but that wasn’t unusual. The guy kept breathing, and Tony wasn’t sure Hammer knew what oxygen was.
“So, who are these guys anyway,” Jen said. She never unhulked, the way Bruce would, but that was okay, because she was smart and sassy all the time. That said, a woman with muscles that could bench press a Sherman was damn impressive on the battlefield. People had been known to give up just when she walked out.
“I don’t know, they didn’t leave a calling card,” Tony said. He dropped the armor to the ground, clanking up to the two hangers on. “Hi up there. Want to do this the hard way, or the easy way? Come on, the easy way, just once, that’d be--”
“We will never--”
“Hard way, great,” Tony said. “They always--”
Look out!
There was a blur in the air and suddenly Tony found himself wrapped in symbiote while a small explosion went off inches from where his unprotected face had been moments before.
“I don’t guess it’d kill you to be careful once in a while, would it?” Eddie muttered.
“You’re more like to kill me if I’m not careful,” Tony quipped. “You can put me down, Bubble Wrap, I won’t break.”
We have our doubts, Venom bellowed morosely.
“Can you yell just a little quieter?”
No.
“Bad guys now, lover’s quarrel later,” Jen said, and she threw something -- it might have been a mailbox, or a very small Chevette, Tony couldn’t quite tell around his face full of symbiote.
“I thought they were all wrapped up?”
“Don’t you know a distraction when you see one, Mr. Stark? It’s like that old movie--” Whatever Peter was about to say was swallowed up in another explosion. “Ow.”
“Enough!” Lady Thor yelled, raising Mjolnir to the sky.
“Shut down, shut down, shut it--” the HUD went dead as Lady Thor sprayed the whole area with lightning. Which was great for getting rid of bad guys, and not great on the circuits that ran the suit. A few seconds later, Friday rebooted. Good girl.
“Okay, are we done here, because I really feel like it’s getting close to having to clock overtime,” Tony complained.
Lady Thor pushed up the visor on her helm, revealing Jane Foster’s face, triumphant and a little sweaty, underneath. “I do believe they’ve all been vanquished.”
“Did the archaic speech patterns come with the hammer? Because you have a PhD in astrophysics, not Shakespeare.”
“Cool story, bro,” Lady Thor said. When she pulled the helmet all the way off, it seemed like she was more… herself. The entire power worthy of Thor was-- well, Tony wasn’t sure what it was. He wasn’t entirely sure that it mattered, either, because there it was. Lady Thor. He didn’t know what happened to the other Thor, either, and Jane didn’t seem inclined to discuss it.
“You’re all just a bunch of freaks,” one of the bad guys swore. And stamped his foot like he was in third grade. Cut rate villains these days. “You don’t deserve to be here, not you, space goo, or you, Tin Man, or that blind devil--”
“Is there someone I’m missing?”
The bad guy continued his rant for a few minutes, and finished with “--the Hand will destroy you all!” and then pulled a tiny blade from behind his neck--
“Shit, shit, Jen, Jen, stop him!”
But it was too late. The man had slit his own throat. He was dead in a splash of blood that painted the sidewalk.
He’s dead now. Are we allowed to eat him?
“Much as I want to say yes, my love,” Eddie said, “we probably need the corpse for something.”
Waste of food.
“I’ll buy you a five-pound Hershey bar,” Tony promised. “We’re not going to get any information out of a dead man.”
“But we might, if we make a deal with the devil,” Eddie said.
“What?”
“The blind devil,” Eddie said. “I-- I might know a guy. But he’s really jumpy, so-- Vee and I will go have a chat with him, see what he might know about all this Hand business. Hand. Stupid name for a group of villains. They should be the Solar Plexus or something.”
“Eddie--”
“I’ll be fine, baby,” Eddie said. “We need intel right now, we’re shooting in the dark. And investigating, that’s… that’s what I do. It’s what I’m good at.”
“No, darling,” Tony corrected. “You’re a hot-shot youtuber who used to have a job. You’re very, very bad at investigating. You are, however, pretty good at instigating.” He smirked, though, because both things were true. And Eddie knew it. He got his story, but he did it by annoying the ever loving fuck out of people.
Also, he is a loser.
“You two make me feel so loved,” Eddie joked.
Tony made a face and leaned over to kiss his boyfriend’s cheek. Venom slithered over Eddie’s skin at the last second, making it a dual kiss. “You two are the loves of my life,” Tony said, utterly sincere. “And I don’t want anything horrible to happen to you.”
“Yeah, no, all the horrible stuff happened before Venom showed up,” Eddie said. “Don’t worry. We’re just going to go talk to some people.”
“Every time you say don’t worry, it just makes me worry more,” Tony complained. “Go, talk to your friend, keep me posted. Don’t… burn anything down, blow anything up, or get arrested.”
That is a short list. Still, could be tricky.
“Try real hard, big guy,” Tony said. “I don’t want to be filling out more than one incident report.”
“Stop fretting,” Eddie told him, and then both of them kissed him, not a cute little peck, but deep, with a lot of tongue (in Venom’s case, absolutely obscene amounts of tongue) and Eddie’s arms went around Tony’s back. He wanted to lose himself in it, sink into it, but--
“After incident reports,” Tony said, pushing back lightly. “I’ll see you soon.”
***
It was getting dark before Venom came out to play, taking over Eddie’s body and moving them rapidly through the concrete jungle.
“What’s Klyntar like,” Eddie wondered, picturing something like Jurassic Park, full of thick, huge trees and angry carnivores.
We don’t know. We’ve never been there.
“You don’t know any of the stories, don’t your people… tell stories?”
Not the way you think of stories. Venom turned inward, introspective. Sad, somehow. The Klyntar are a benevolent species, but there is no literature on my home planet. And though it is our goal to make the universe better, we create no art, no music, no culture. At least, not as other civilizations would understand it. All we have are our hosts -- the beings we join with -- to forge through the cold and unforgiving cosmos with. The bond between a Klyntar and its host is sacred. They give our lives context and our existence meaning. They give us history. All we have are our hosts to tell us who we are.
“Riot didn’t seem very benevolent,” Eddie said.
We were cast out. For being corrupt.
“You’re--”
I was. Then I met you. Then I bonded with you, and I knew everything had to change. You and this special, beautiful planet.
“Love you too, big guy,” Eddie said.
Matt Murdock had been the lawyer -- blind, and very, very good -- that helped get Eddie off for the crimes he’d done while under the influence. And Venom leniency. Those trials had built off the trial of James Barnes, the Winter Soldier. And after that, Josef Sokolov had also gotten off.
Which was how Eddie met Murdock.
And then, not much after that, Venom had a little run in with DareDevil, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.
Who was, in fact, Matt Murdock.
Venom could smell it.
When the Hand -- whatever that was, and whoever the bad guy was -- mentioned the blind devil, Eddie thought, maybe it was Murdock who knew… something.
There were a few problems with that. First of all, Murdock had no idea that Eddie and Venom knew who he was, and his alter ego.
The second problem made the first one moot.
They couldn’t find the damn guy.