#whispers#don’t stop there (via @zainclaw)
It starts with humming, but that is not where it ends.
Eddie pulls music from a variety of sources after that. Venom listens to them in a set of ratty headphones that spit out quality music- classical and jazz and rock and country and blues. They listen to EDM for only a few seconds and Venom recedes for an hour and Eddie never tries it again. Eddie patiently teaches Venom a camp song he learned as a child, and offers Venom his vocal cords to sing it aloud and the ensuing burst of energy feels like someone set an entire night’s worth of fireworks off inside his mind.
On a day off, Eddie drives them out to a musical instruments store and he absolutely doesn’t wonder whether Venom appreciates the rumble of the motorbike between their thighs. He finds a piano at the back of the store, one that faces away from the rest of the floor, one with the lid raised in a way that blocks him from view, and he lays his fingers on the pale keys. He’s never played piano in his life, but he plucks keys across all the ranges and Venom reaches out from his chest to touch the wood and the wires and reaches into Eddie’s fingers to feel the smooth keys depress beneath their shared whim. They pluck at guitar strings together, and Venom straightens a triangle into a pole after the first note.
He drives to the park in the middle of a thunderstorm and lets the rain patter over his skin and when the lightning cracks across the sky, he warns Venom about what comes next. Eddie’s skin shivers when the boom of thunder rumbles through them, on the cusp of pain without crossing over it. The sheer volume leaves Eddie gasping for his next breath and Venom clinging ten times tighter to him after the way the thunder trembled their true form.
Eddie knows why, but he made sure before he came here. Thunder can’t separate them, he knows that. He made sure.
“Don’t worry,” he says, arms up as rain drenches them, soaking his clothing and dripping cold down the curve of his neck. Maybe someday he’ll be able to reach for Venom inside without closing his eyes, but for now he does, and feels the press of Venom against his mind in return. I’m still yours. I choose you.
You have no choice, Eddie, Venom reminds him softly.
I don’t need one, he thinks back with no amount of reservation.
He’d wanted a choice, once upon a time. He had wanted one right up until it had been given to him and he realized there was no choice, but not for the reasons Venom thought. Riot had ripped Venom away from him, and in that moment, Eddie had chosen. Eddie had reached for Venom.
Eddie will always reach for them.
“I don’t want to have to make that choice again, you know?” Eddie says.
I won’t leave you either, Venom tells him, which is exactly what Eddie wants to hear. You’re mine.
On their way home, Eddie starts to hum.
theartofmadeline
amandla
gummygunk
dailybridgerton
turnnoffyourmind
tangentwithtanner
