Fic: Table Manners (Comfortember)

[csi_sanders1129]

Title: Table Manners
Chapters: 1/1
Author:csi_sanders1129
Genre: Friendship
Ratings: T
Word Count: 930
Pairings/Characters: Eddie Brock/Venom, Anne Weying/Dan Lewis.
Synopsis: This is a trap, Eddie realizes, just a little bit too late. It had seemed so innocuous, a simple invitation to dinner on a Friday night with Anne and Dan. Nothing suspicious at all, right? Wrong. So very, very wrong.
Comments: Written for Comfortember 2020, Prompt: Junk Food. First try at Venom fic. Comments and kudos would be awesome. Enjoy!

This is a trap, Eddie realizes, just a little bit too late. It had seemed so innocuous, a simple invitation to dinner on a Friday night with Anne and Dan. Nothing suspicious at all, right? Wrong. So very, very wrong. Eddie sits across the table from the two of them, both looking at him expectantly. "What?" he asks, eyes darting from one of them to the other and then down to the plate of untouched salad in front of him.

"Something wrong?" Anne asks him, an eyebrow raised. "You haven't touched your food."

He struggles to find a way out of this without being an asshole. "Uh, yeah. Just… not in the mood for salad, I guess."

'What is this?' Venom grumbles, refusing to let Eddie take even a bite of what he's sure is something poisonous.

He's gotten better at talking to Venom in his head rather than out loud, so he mentally hisses, 'Look, it's food. Just let me eat it and then you'll get meat, okay?' Venom begrudgingly allows this, and he manages a few bites before Venom's clear distaste for it makes his stomach roil.

The shrill beeping of the oven timer makes him cringe – it's not quite high enough a frequency to do any harm, but noises like it grate on his nerves like they never did before – and Anne ducks out of the room to rescue the main course.

"What, uh, what's for dinner, anyway?" Eddie asks. Whatever it is, it smells good, Italian, he'd guess. He's hoping for something that has plenty of meat to keep Venom happy.

"Oh, it's an eggplant lasagna," Dan explains, "I found a recipe I really wanted to try. I hope you don't mind that it's vegetarian."

It occurs to him then that the meat he promised Venom will not be coming. Shit.

'I will happily consume your kidneys instead,' Venom warns and even though Eddie knows Venom will put them back again, he'd much rather not have them eaten at all. "Yeah, that's… fine? Fine. Totally fine."

Anne reappears, and the two of them are both watching him with that look again. "Is there a reason that wouldn't be fine?" Anne tries, setting the casserole dish down in the center of the table. "Is there something you want to tell us?"

Fuck. They know. They totally know. They've known all along. It's useless, he's sure, but he tries anyway - "Tell you what?"

"Venom's still with you."

"What?" he exclaims in alarm, "No! No, no, no."

"So if we were to, I don't know, crank the stereo, that wouldn't… bother you at all?"

"I mean, it's pretty late, you wouldn't want to annoy your neighbors, would you? Does old Mrs. Franklin still live next door? She's liable to come and knock down the door if you wake her up. Remember that time I accidentally set of the smoke detector trying to-"

"Mrs. Franklin is terrifying," Dan concedes the point. A look from Anne gets him back on track. "Look, Eddie, we're just worried for you. Venom was killing you before."

"Oddly enough, he only does that now if I don't feed him," Eddie explains, looking pointedly at the meatless meal before him.

With an exasperated sigh, Anne gets to her feet. "I have some chicken in the fridge, I'll throw it on for you," she tells him.

"You don't have to do that, raw is… better." Dan looks like he wants to protest, but Eddie cuts in, "Oh, don't worry. We… we've eaten way worse things. The, uh, the lobster incident wasn't a fluke."

"I will take your word for it."

Venom forms out of Eddie's chest when Anne returns, and he scarfs down the entire plate of raw chicken in less than a second. "Thanksssss," he hisses. Eddie rolls his eyes, they've discussed the Anne situation multiple times since Venom came back to him. There will be no winning her back, Eddie had insisted, Dan was an okay guy and as long as Anne was happy, Eddie would be happy, too. As long as Venom was with him, Eddie would be happy.

"Nice to see you again, Venom," Anne greets him like he's an old friend and not, in fact, like he's a very hungry symbiotic alien who'd been actively contemplating which of Eddie's organs would be tastiest, and Dan, having never actually seen Venom's face before, gives a nervous wave.

"Can we continue dinner now, V?" Eddie asks. "You can stay out, if you want. Right?" He looks to Anne and Dan to see if they're okay with that (they both offer nods of agreement). "We can all be friends."

Venom seems to like the idea. Eddie can feel a wave of contentment somewhere in the back of his mind. "…Will there be chocolate?" he asks, hopeful.

Anne laughs, "For dessert, yes, there's chocolate."

"Yessssss."

Eddie is not quite sure how this happened. Whatever Anne and Dan had planned for when they invited him over, he's reasonably confident it did not end with the three of them scattered about the living room, Venom curled around Eddie's shoulders like some sort of a viscous scarf, sharing bowls of chocolate ice cream and explaining how Venom had survived the explosion after all.

When he finally takes his leave, Anne stops him at the door. "You and Venom will have to join us next week for dinner, too. We'll make sure it's not vegetarian," she promises.

"We," he says, speaking for the both of them now that Venom's back inside him for the trek home, "We would like that."