Imagine a witcher MCU Au with Venom!Geralt and Spider-Man!Jaskier.
Geralt is out late, hauling home his package of chocolate and tater tots, when he picks up the sound of noises coming down the alleyway ahead of him. And, well, he could walk by, Venom would be fine with human food, but one of the voices sounded young…
He doesn’t regret it when he turns away from the well lit street to find a young man (more of a boy than anything) backed against the wall, a knife held to his throat. And Geralt doesn’t know who the boy is, but he can tell just based on his raggedy clothing that his assailant won’t find anything of worth in the brunette’s pockets.
But then the man’s hand is reaching lower, voice too quiet for Geralt to catch, but with the enhancements being bonded with Venom give him he can see the way the boy’s eyes widen in panic. In fear. And he doesn’t need to see or hear anything more for Venom to surge forth, to approach the leering man who smells of alcohol, to—
Geralt is grateful that at least this time, Venom didn’t get any blood on his clothes or face. Still, he dreads turning around, knows that sometimes (usually) this is the worst part. Seeing the victim and how they look at Geralt, the way they often view him with more fear than they did the one who actually threatened them.
And Geralt wouldn’t trade Venom for anything, wouldn’t want to stop helping people with the alien even if he could, but it still…it’s not a good feeling, is all. So he braces himself, pivots, and—
The boy smiles at him, and…thanks him? Says he would have preferred to just call the police, really, there was no need to go so far. And that’s…Geralt is wondering what on earth is happening as the boy SCOLDS him, something about not knowing what diseases the man could have…?
It’s enough to process that by the time Geralt has wrapped his head around what just happened, the boy is long gone. Even Venom is unusually quiet as they finish their walk home, the alien seemingly as stumped by the boy’s actions as Geralt is.
It’s two weeks later, when Geralt has mostly put the encounter out of his mind, that he happens upon the boy again. He’s walking home after a late night snack run (it’s not his fault his parasite had a hankering for Doritos) when he hears the boy’s voice coming from the same alley, which has Geralt wondering if maybe the boy is just an idiot. After all, if he didn’t learn his lesson the first time, but maybe he would if Geralt didn’t step in this time…?
So Geralt watches, hidden in the shadows at the entrance of the alley, as the would-be robber tells the boy to give him everything he has. The boy does so, not looking nearly scared enough in Geralt’s books, at least until the robber starts swearing when he sees the boy has nothing. Which, honestly, the boy’s shoes were being held together by tape, what did he think the boy would have—
Geralt freezes at the sound of a safety clicking off and decides immediately that as much as he wants this stupid kid to learn a lesson, it wasn’t worth the risk to his life.
Geralt is quicker this time to face the boy—Julian, according to the ID in the wallet in his hand—and doesn’t even bother to hold his tongue as he digs into the boy (18, not a kid, but still so young—) about walking in alleys when it’s dark. Julian has the decency to look a bit sheepish, at least, but doesn’t appear nearly as cowed as Geralt would like. And when Geralt tries to make the teenager promise to stay at home after dark, the man has the audacity to grin, and cheekily say that he can’t, because he’d never get the chance to see Geralt again then.
As if meeting Geralt was worth almost dying again like he’d already almost done. Twice.
Still dumbfounded, Geralt can do little else but watch the man walk away, wondering if maybe the teenager was dropped on his head as a babe. Even Venom agrees that Julian is a few screws loose as they make their way home, both of them questioning how he has survived for this long without winding up in the morgue.
Which…makes Geralt feel funny. He’s surprised at how much the imagery bothers him, the idea of the cheery brunette not making it home one night because Geralt wasn’t there to help him. That the man who didn’t fear Venom after seeing him eat a man whole would have his corpse frozen in terror because he’d been too stupid to keep himself safe.
So maybe Geralt starts making more convenience store trips late at night, but it’s only because Venom conveniently asks for such food at midnight. And so what if he’d usually make the parasite stick with what was at home, the exercise won’t kill him, and this way he gets to sleep in. It’s a win win, really.
Geralt seems to save the boy every other week, and it’s not long before Julian begins to grow on him even more. The man is a human beam of sunshine, chattering Geralt’s ear off about the courses he’s taking at community college. Apparently what the man lacks in common sense and self-preservation, he seems to make up for in engineering and technological intelligence.
And maybe Geralt takes to walking the boy home to his apartment after such encounters, but it only makes sense, really. He goes through so much trouble saving the teenager, it would be stupid to let him die getting run over by a car or something because he was distracted by a stray cat or some shiny trash on the ground.
(Geralt will never admit it, but it makes him feel better to know the man is safe at home, in his crummy apartment on the bad side of town. He sees the faded bruises on the man’s arms, the black eye and split lip the teenager tries to hide with makeup. It’s not Geralt’s business, he has no right to pry, but he can’t help the way his eyes roam over the boy each time he sees him, looking for hidden injuries even when he knows there’s little he can do about them. Geralt is well aware he has no right to drag Julian back to his own, nicer apartment to make sure he’s taken care of the wound in his side from which he can smell the faint scent of blood.)
Geralt’s known the college student for half a year when he falls for the trap of a woman getting her purse stolen, and ends up stuck in a lab. He doesn’t know what they’re doing to Venom, has lost track of time since they used the high frequency from their machine to separate him from the symbiote. He thinks it’s been four days, but the meals have been infrequent, and the harsh fluorescent lights are always on, and—
Geralt is too tired to flinch at the sound of the emergency alarms, idly wondering what was happening to draw all the guards away from his cell. It doesn’t matter anyways, because without Venom, Geralt is just a regular man. Maybe a bit stronger due to his build and working out, but that’s not nearly enough to break the steal bars.
Geralt does flinch, though, when a man falls through a vent into Geralt’s cage, holding—
Geralt feels like he can breathe again at the sensation of Venom bonding with him, the emptiness in his head and chest filled once more. It’s child’s play to let the symbiote fully cover his body, relishing in the sensation of the alien surrounding him in a wall of protection.
He looks to the man who had literally dropped in, surprised to find it’s the vigilante Geralt has sometimes spotted while out at night. Geralt has steered clear of him, well aware keeping his company would only encourage the cops to target them both even more, but the masked man seemed decent enough. He’d been around for about four years, and was known for cracking jokes and tying up his victims with loops upon loops of vines with flowers. It’s why he’d gotten the name—
“Well, I’m glad to see that worked out! I wasn’t really sure what to do if your symbiote didn’t bond with you. I mean, I had a backup plan, but this is honestly much better. But where are my manners! I’m your friendly neighborhood Jaskier, here to rescue—”
Julian—who was actually Jaskier, apparently, what the—hushes him, going so far as to stand on his tip-toes to slap a hand over Venom’s mouth.
“Secret identity much!” He hisses, shaking his head. Geralt could easily picture the way the man must be rolling his cornflower blue eyes beneath his yellow mask.
“We really must be leaving though, my distraction—”
The sound of a distant explosion has Venom tearing the bars off the cage, and the duo make short work of finding their way to the exit. Geralt wasn’t sure exactly what Julian had done, but it left their chosen escape route clear of people. The older man wonders idly as they escape what seemed to be an abandoned warehouse, if his chosen degree path was just a way to hide his making of whatever bombs Geralt could still hear occasionally going off. If so, Geralt has greatly underestimated the man.
Geralt turns to question the other vigilante, blinking when he realizes he’s alone in the alley. Cursing, he yells out Jaskier’s name, close to panicking when he notices the single yellow flower growing in the ground ahead of him. Shaking his head, he quickly makes his way home, deciding he would process it all after a meal, bath, and long nap, in that order.
Once he was feeling better, Geralt starts looking for Jaskier, doing his best to track down the vigilante. Every time he gets close to the man though, he finds he was minutes too late, all that was left of the vigilante being his tied up assailants and occasionally a somewhat shaken victim.
So when he hears the man’s voice coming from an alley on a walk one night, he practically sprints to the teenager, making short work of the criminal trying once more to take advantage of Julian.
Julian, who was a vigilante, who seemed to be at least as strong as Venom, who—
“Why on earth didn’t you stop him?! Or any of others who tried to rob you, tried to—to—”
Jaskier shrugs, his usual carefree grin on his face. “I knew you would save me.” He says, as if it was that simple. As if he took one look at Geralt and decided he wasn’t the villain, but was—
“I’m no hero, Julian.” Geralt scowls, eying the new butterfly tape holding a cut together on the teenager’s forehead.
“And I’d never ask you to be.” Julian’s grin turns to something softer as he hefts his bag on his shoulder.
Geralt grumbles, but trails behind the college student, figuring if the kid wasn’t going to defend himself he would have to step up and do so. Venom practically purrs at the thought, easily as protective over the young man by now as Geralt was.
Geralt would always scare people. There was no changing the way others viewed him as a monster when they saw the symbiote eating people alive like a human ate sushi. But that didn’t mean he had to be the villain everyone thought he was.
That he couldn’t pretend, at least around Julian—Jaskier—to be something more.
