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Eddie sat in the window, staring outside with sleepy disinterest. Fall had finally reared its head once more, bringing the cold that the man had grown to hate. His grey fluffy sweater clung to his body snugly, helping to contain some his body heat. In his hands rested an old red coffee cup, filled to the brim with hot chocolate. Eddie’s eyelids were heavy and his body ached despite having slept away most of the day. Sleep didn’t really seem to help him much anymore.
He gazed out the window, up into the cloudy sky. Eddie watched as the leaves leaves fell from the tree right outside of his home. The beautiful oranges and yellows descended in a blur of dizzying motion, falling to the wet sidewalk below the nearly bare branches of the tree.
Eddie remembered with a weak smile the first time Venom questioned why all the leaves in the city were changing colors and making their way to the ground.
---
“ Eddie. ” The voice in their head had called.
“Hm? What is it, V?” The man replied aloud, tucking his hands into his hoodie’s pockets as he paced down the sidewalk. He kept his voice down, however, not wanting to gain any unwanted attention. He could communicate through thoughts, sure, but there was little fun in staying silent all the time.
“ Why are all of the trees dying? ” Venom had asked with a hint of frustration in his voice.
They couldn’t bring themselves to understand why every tree in the city was wilting and dying. Eddie had let out a laugh, finding it rather cute how clueless Venom still was to things that were so normal to himself and all other humans. There was a gentle huff from Venom when Eddie laughed but the symbiote quickly let his anger go so that he could receive an answer from his other half.
“They aren’t dying, V.” Eddie had said.
“ No? But they are shifting colors and falling apart. We cannot do that, Eddie. ”
If pieces of Eddie were falling off Venom would have been much more concerned than he was about the plants around them. But Eddie wasn’t falling apart.
Venom made sure to keep his host happy and healthy.
“That’s what happens in the fall, bud. The leaves fall off of the trees.”
There was a brief moment of silence before Venom’s voice returned with a simple,
“ Why? ”
“Why?” Eddie parroted back, squinting as he thought for a moment. Although he certainly wasn’t a scientist, he knew the basics of how the world around him functioned.
“They’re preparing for winter. Like how a bear hibernates.” Venom seemed pleased with this answer, humming softly in thought.
“ But humans do not hibernate, Eddie. ”
The man laughed softly at that, a wide smile plastered to his face. He didn’t care if passerby"s saw him laughing and talking to himself now. He was in far too good of a mood.
“Sometimes I wish we did.”
---
Tears gathered at the corners of Eddie’s eyes and a few slipped down his cheeks as his throat tightened. The hot chocolate helped warm Eddie’s ice cold hands but even the thick blue blanket that was wrapped around him didn’t help warm his freezing feet.
Eddie shifted, pressing his cheek against the window. He ignored its ice cold touch.
With a shiver he watched as a few people passed by, walking on the sidewalk below. A few of them were carrying umbrellas to shield them from the falling rain.
---
“ What are those, Eddie? ” Venom had asked one fall afternoon as they were passing by a small coffee shop. Eddie’s tired eyes drifted up, locking onto an umbrella that a small woman was carrying above her head. It was only sprinkling, though, so Eddie himself had only thrown up his hood and curled in on himself a little tighter, relying on both his hoodie and Venom’s warm embrace to keep him from getting cold.
Nothing could beat a symbiote wrapping around his body to keep them warm.
“Umbrellas.” Eddie replied simply.
“ To block the rain? ” Venom questioned. Eddie nodded with a tired smile.
It took the man a moment to realize the feeling of raindrops on the top of his hood had ceased.
Eddie stopped walking for a moment and took his hood down, gazing up at the shiny black umbrella that Venom had formed above their head. It reached out from his shoulder where Venom’s inky substance was clinging to Eddie’s hoodie, making sure that the umbrella stayed in place. Eddie blinked, then shook his head.
“Now you’re getting wet.”
“ We’re getting wet either way. ”
---
Eddie’s baggy, tired eyes slowly drifted down to the cup of hot chocolate in his hands.
The melted marshmallows made the brown drink look marbled and inky...
Hot chocolate always was V’s favorite drink....
---
“ There is chocolate water? ” The symbiote questioned excitedly with a chirp in his voice.
The thought of chocolate flavoured water made Eddie cringe and shake his head.
“Well, uh… Sorta, V. There’s milk and sugar in there too... You just gotta try it.”
“ We only drink chocolate water now, Eddie. ” Venom had informed him.
Eddie smiled and shook his head with amusement as he grabbed a box of the mixture from the store’s shelf.
---
Eddie’s heart clenched painfully. He slowly turned away from his drink, thick tears spilling down his face as he let out a pathetic sound. A whimper. A sob.
---
They had been walking home when it happened.
It was a snap. A loud, booming snap. Eddie’s heart sank and he immediately knew something wasn’t right. A shared feeling of panic surged through their body and Eddie stumbled over to a wall, gripping onto the bricks with wide eyes. Eddie panted and shook, eyes huge and petrified.
“ EDDIE! ” Venom called out. Fear was eminent in their voice.
Eddie clutched his own chest as he trembled. It didn’t take any time at all for Venom to shift out of their body, quickly forming a hand to hold Eddie’s own.
“What- what is t-this?” Eddie whined out in a shaky voice.
“ Don’t- don’t know. ” Was all Venom panted back.
The symbiote slipped out of his host’s body further, revealing his full form from the waist up.
Their opal eyes were blown wide with horror and their physical form struggled to remain solid, turning gooey and formless a few times in his panic.
“Venom!” Eddie screamed out, not giving a damn who heard him. The man fell to his knees, weakly reaching out for the symbiote. Eddie’s head found its way to Venom’s shoulder as both of them shook, petrified as their body changed.
“We… We’ll be alright, right, big guy?” Eddie questioned shakily, trying to assure himself more than Venom. Venom didn’t answer and that petrified Eddie. The symbiote stared at his other half, eyes still wide with terror as their form alone began to wither away, fading to dust. Tears rolled down Eddie’s face as he shook his head, gripping onto his symbiote’s shoulders for dear life.
“NO! No, no no no no!” Eddie sobbed out, shaking like a leaf.
“Tell me how to fix this, V!” The man had pleaded. Venom had no answer and they themselves hadn’t the slightest clue what was happening to them, either. What they did know was that whatever this was wasn’t affecting Eddie, and that soothed the symbiote.
“ You will be okay. ” Venom had said softly. They closed their eyes and gave Eddie a toothy grin.
“No, V! We’ll be okay. We have to be okay! We are one! We are Venom!”
Eddie’s hands slipped through Venom’s shoulders as they too evaporated into dust.
Venom opened his pupil-less, milky eyes one last time to smile and growl out.
“ No… We were Venom. ”
Eddie couldn’t find it in himself to form coherent words as the rest of his other half disintegrated completely, turning to nothing more than dust at his feet in the small alleyway.
---
Three months had passed since that day.
Every single day Eddie would wake up, stare at the ceiling and lie in wait, hoping that Venom would speak... Call him a loser or a pussy…
But nobody ever spoke. Nobody ever replied to him. His thoughts were his own and only his own once again and it was something he never thought he’d hate.
Eddie sat in the window shivering and sobbing.
It was just him .