#juno 01

On most nights like this, Venom will be quiet and still and close, wrapped over Eddie like a coat of dew, clinging to the underneath of his skin. Eddie dissolves for a while into neurochemical static and loose-shaped imagination, and the hours swallow them both up. Venom doesn’t sleep, but aimlessly following Eddie’s mind as he dreams is a kind of solace that must not be very different.

Tonight, though, Venom cannot make himself be still. This place digs hooks into his skin, flicking and stinging just persistently enough that he can never quite settle down, however mild the irritation might be at any moment. Crises. He can’t wait to get out of here for good, and not just with an ill-advised night train to take him anywhere else.

Venom stands out like a blot of ink against the luminescent white of Nectar’s beaches. He half expects to see his footprints stain the sand as he strolls. He shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be wearing his own skin: he knows Eddie is nervous that someone here in this fishbowl of a place knowing too much about them could mean disaster.

But he just needs to breathe, in the metaphorical sense, and however much Eddie’s body is his as well, it’s nice to stretch out a little now and again, even if he still chafes against the newfound constraints that keep him bound to solidity. It would be nice to swim to the bottom of the ocean right now. Just disappear in the black of the deep.

Ah, but there’s company.

He catches the smell of some other human on the air, animal and sweet against the salt breeze, and lets the inky black of his body subside beneath Eddie’s skin before whoever it is can get too close.

(It would be fun to tease them-- chase them down or show them a flash of teeth, just enough to menace-- but he still isn’t certain of the rules here, and he’s not keen on incineration again.)