Work Text:
“Break a leg, Eddie!” The only warning Eddie got was a growl inside of his head, but it was enough for him to grab his opposite arm before Venom could use it to throttle the well-wishing editor. He gave an awkward smile before ducking out of the small office, grateful he didn’t lose his job and gain an assault charge.
“That was not a bad guy.” Eddie said quietly as he walked down the sidewalk, “Why did you try and hurt him?”
He told you to break your leg while working! Venom sounded so offended by this, that Eddie couldn’t keep from laughing, getting a few looks and a couple of people crossing the street because of it.
“No, he… he was wishing me good luck.”
…Ah, he wants us to break the leg of who he wants us to interview.
“No! Not at all! It’s an expression!”
Why not say ‘good luck’ only?
“If we all used the same phrases, then we’d all talk the same, and talking to other people would be boring.” As most things Eddie said about human culture, Venom believed it without much doubt, having no other reference point, and it decided to give these ‘expressions’ a try.
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“What are you doing, V?” Eddie asked, trying to stuff the alien back into his sweatshirt. It didn’t always follow the rule of keeping itself out of sight, but Eddie could usually say the alien was a toy or a pet snake. That would be hard to if it was hanging out of him with its mouth wide open and aimed at the sky.
“You heard what the weather man said, Eddie. Pets are going to be falling from the sky today.”
“No, that—” Eddie wheezed, trying not to draw attention to them by laughing out loud. “That means it’s going to rain really hard.”
“With rain the size of dogs and cats? Is it safe out here for you?”
“The rain is going to be normal sized, just a lot and really fast.” Eddie could feel the disappointment through their bond, and decided to get Venom a snack before it went after someone’s dog. The alien finally moved back inside of his body before they got to the crowded streets of Chinatown.
“What do you feel like today?” Eddie asked as he walked into a grocery store, he spotted a goose turning on a spit and winced at the price. “Hopefully nothing that costs us an arm and a leg.”
A cooked goose is worth two hands. Venom said, matter-of-factly, Eddie’s expression grew blank as he tried to figure out what the alien was trying to say.
“Did you sniff some wet paint on the way here, buddy?” Eddie looked through the seafood section, Venom had its metaphorical heart set on a lobster despite their price per pound, so Eddie was trying to eyeball which of them was the smallest.
This is taking a San Francisco hour. Venom grumbled in his head. Eddie had to put a hand over his mouth, making him look like a connoisseur of lobsters rather than a man that laughed randomly at the animals. He pointed at a lobster and bought it, not caring for the price as he had to get out of the store to let out the giggles he was holding back.
“You’ve been looking into those expressions, huh, V?” he asked. Eddie had to assume that the alien was getting them from his own head, as it sometimes had difficulty articulating the thoughts it found into words.
Yes, Eddie. I have found many to use.
“Let me test you. I’m going to say something in plain English, and you are going to use a phrase for it.” Eddie looked around, “How would you say that there’s a lot of convenience stores around?”
They are ten pennies in a carton. Eddie laughed again, and was honestly surprised that Venom wasn’t getting upset about being teased.
“How about not judging someone based on their appearances?”
Read a book’s inside.
“That one is actually pretty close, I’ll ask you one more. What about when we argue? Any phrases about that?”
One person cannot get tangled.
“… I don’t know about that one. You get pretty tangled up in stuff all by yourself.” Eddie unlocked the door to the apartment lobby before going up the stairs, Venom controlling his legs to make him run up.
Hurry, Eddie! It is time to head and bread together!
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The lobster snack made it possible for them to go out on a patrol without Venom being too insistent on actually eating the bad guys. The alien was good at picking up disturbances, but it was up to Eddie to decide if they needed to interfere. He slipped into an alley where there was the sound of a struggle, of garbage and their containers being knocked about by something much bigger than a stray. Eddie had to duck quickly to avoid being hit by an airborne soup can. He could feel Venom starting to come out, even if this person wasn’t in a fight, they were still causing trouble and could use a scare.
“Oh, fuck! Stop!” Eddie halted Venom, as he saw the culprit was an elderly woman that was banging on a trash bin with her cane. She looked at him, aghast and offended at his language, as if it were ruder than the fact she was upturning an entire alley. Eddie tried to think of a way to apologize when Venom supplied an option loudly in his head:
I can hardly speak English!
“….pardon my French, miss. What are you doing out here at night?”
“My cat got out through the window. She doesn’t usually get too far, my apartment’s right up there.” She gestured with a hand at one of the windows, “So she must be down here, hiding in all this mess.”
“She’s as good as found with us-- me helping you.”
You can’t count on a basket of chickens. At this point, Eddie was sure these were just non-sequiturs, and was glad the woman didn’t have the sharpest hearing or she’d get upset at him laughing about her cat being lost.
It took longer for them to search than it would have even if they didn’t have a symbiote to help them, as it was quite clear the animal was no longer in the alley. She kept insisting that the feline wouldn’t have left this area and Eddie didn’t want to leave her out here alone with the possibility of an unsavory type coming upon her. He was trying to figure out how to convince her to go inside when Venom made his head turn upward, pointing it toward the old woman’s window, where there was the clear silhouette of a cat inside.
After getting the woman back to the apartment, cleaning up the alleyway for the garbage collectors (Venom was surprisingly skilled at sorting different types of waste), an accidentally scaring the hell out of a couple that thought a dank alley was a good make out spot, Eddie was hoping for an old-fashioned crime, and San Francisco delivered.
Three tries to cast a spell. Venom said before covering Eddie up and moving toward the two men in the third alley they investigated. One man had a knife pointed at the other’s throat and was making demands that Venom didn’t bother listening to. They landed with a loud thud right next to them, the aggressor taking a step back from his victim as he stared at Venom. He didn’t look away even after the other human took off running down the alleyway. The criminal flung the knife at Venom before trying to flee as well, but they grabbed him and slammed him up against the wall. Venom pointed a claw at the mugger’s throat, mimicking the way he had menaced the other human.
“Consume the pills of your own making!” Eddie was sure that the man was able to hear him laughing from inside of Venom, but his terror didn’t decrease, if anything he looked more frightened. He struggled against Venom’s grip, keeping his neck taut and away from the menacing claw.
“We are taking your ears.” The man’s face turned totally white at that, “If you even point a plastic spork at someone, we will use it to scoop out your eyeballs, feed them to you, and then eat you.”
That’s a roundabout way to eat someone, V.
“His eyeballs are very round.” Once the man seemed pleaded out, Venom dropped him and allowed him to flee. There wasn’t anymore trouble for the night, so they headed in early (if three in the morning could be considered early), and Eddie decided to use this time to work on his next article.
He was yawning even before he opened up his laptop, which meant coffee would be required before starting. Venom had other ideas, as it kept closing every cupboard and drawer that he opened before he could reach inside.
“What now?” he asked, rubbing at an eye and suppressing another yawn.
“It is not a mug of john you are needing, Eddie.” The man let out a short laugh, shaking his head.
“What am I needing then?”
“You need to punch your bed.” Usually, Eddie would get peeved at the alien for keeping him away from his coffee, but it was hard to stay mad at it while it was being so comical.
“Fine. No coffee. But I’m still going to do a bit of work.” That was easier said than done, as he was able to pull up all the necessary emails and information, but he was having trouble focusing on them. He was fiddling with the drawstring on his hoodie as he reread the same sentence four times, trying a different sentence with the same result. He started to nod off, even in his upright position he was able to fall into a peaceful sleep, still messing with the drawstring. No sleep, however deep it was, could keep him from waking up when a deep, inhuman voice said these words in his head:
The devil plays with your fingers.
Eddie jerked awake, looking down at the drawstring which had been worried so much it was starting to unravel, and he’d managed to close everything on his laptop as well. Determined to use the bit of energy the nap provided, he went to reopen his tabs, only to see that there were quite a few closed ones in his recent history that he didn’t remember opening. With a frown, he opened them all up, hoping that the cause was not a virus, but something closer to a parasite that didn’t understand the importance of asking for permission.
There was video after video of different English idioms, along with a few webpages but the alien wasn’t the best reader without Eddie to help translate. He could understand if Venom got the phrases a little bit wrong or mixed up, but not to the extent it had been. Venom picked up words as easily as a human toddler (and seemed fond of the bad ones like they were too), and there was no way all of these videos just went over the alien’s head.
“What… Why would you pretend not to know them? To see how long it would take me to notice? To see how stupid I—” Venom shushed Eddie by placing a tendril on his lips, moving in close to the human’s face.
“No, Eddie, I was not trying to trick you.” Venom said, looking at the computer screen and then back to Eddie. “When I say these things wrong, it makes you laugh.” Venom didn’t have to explain further, at least not verbally, as memories of Eddie’s laughter and the burst of happiness that coursed through him and the symbiote each time made it clear. Eddie wrapped his arms around Venom, grinning from ear to ear and sending back feelings of love and appreciation.
“That’s the sweetest thing ever, V, I think all that milk chocolate is getting to you.”
“I am not as bad as you are, Eddie.” Venom snuggled him back despite this observation, “Your organs hang off of your shirts.”
The man’s laughter was loud enough to cause the tenant below to bang against their ceiling with a broom handle, which only made Venom join in with its own, deeper and louder laughter.