Chapter 2)Inglorious morning of doom

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Eddie surfaced back into the land of the living somewhere around noon, although it felt more like the dawn of the dead.

With a one way ticket to the bathroom floor, Eddie relieved himself from all the tequila shots he shouldn't have been taking. In an unflattering manner, he forcefully emptied his stomach into the toilet bowl and let an unearthly moan pass his lips.

Usually, Venom could never pass a chance to point out Eddie's flaws, but the alien was obnoxiously quiet at the moment. Eddie could feel his symbiote point its claw at him holding back an 'I told you so'.

The thirst was real, but so were the steps to get to the kitchen. Or sink, which would take at least three steps that he wasn't ready to take.

This hangover, although Eddie wasn't a rookie on the subject, was a severe one; perhaps even worse than his past hangovers because ever since V joined, Eddie had the luxury of being free of any forms of bodily discomfort.

Pussy, V snarled not impressed by Eddie's pain as his fingers gripped around the edge of the porcelain and dunking his head back into the toilet for round three.

Eddie felt too sick to even come up with a response, moaning and hiding his face in the palm of his hands.

There was a small bit of sympathy in V, as a set of tendrils shot out of Eddie's back with an extremely annoyed sigh. One flushed the toilet and the other filled a glass of water.

Like a man lost in the Sahara, Eddie drained the glass quickly then held the glass up towards V and silently pleaded for a refill.

How did you manage to survive without us? V spat from within, deliberately loud making Eddie squirm and cradle his thumping head in his hands again.

"V, some other time ok, I'm dying here," Eddie groaned, partly pleading, partly ordering.

Venom mercifully kept quiet and Eddie received another glass of water.

"Can you please fix us up?"

No, you wanted to have a night out, now you must learn that your actions have consequences.

"I learned believe me, I just puked my fucking guts out. I've learned, I'm a perfect little boy scout, now please do the magic fixie V. C'mon, I'm in pain, which means we're in pain."

As a six million year old predatorial warrior, I think I'll manage; there was something smug and belittling in V's words.

"Fine, be a dick about it. Do we have aspirins?" Eddie huffed, unsteadily getting back on his feet. Going through his bathroom cabinet, he found a ridiculous amount of empty items. Empty packages, empty shampoo bottles, empty toothpaste tubes and something that must be a sponge but could also have been a severe form of fungus.

We don't have aspirins, V eventually informed him as Eddie unsuccessfully ran through the last drawer, why should we have aspirins? We have us and if you weren't such a disgrace of a human being last night we would have healed us.

"If you weren't such a disgrace of a human being last night we would have healed us," Eddie repeated in a hissy fit voice, making a face. Kicking the drawer back in frustration, the drawer rebounded and the merciless wooden edge shot a jolt of pain up his shinbone.

Eddie bit the inside of his cheek, feeling extremely sorry for himself. The safest thing to do was go back to bed, morph into a fetal position and ride out the pain, like a man.

Scoffing laughter echoed through the back of his head, sending another wave of sickness towards his stomach.

The toilet was clearly his one and only friend today. Eddie hugged it feverishly; sweat pouring down his back, drenching the shirt he wore last night. It didn't take him long to empty his stomach. Eddie sat back against the sink, arms dangling on his side with his head feeling way too heavy for his body. At least there was peace, serenity, quietness.

Karma was a bitch as a slight buzz from a door bell sounded from the hallway, which had all of a sudden turned into a skull splittingly loud argument.

For a moment, Eddie allowed the thought of having V popping out of his body like a jack in the box. It had worked before, his previous neighbour never dared to let a guitar riff slip after a mere glance of Venom's game-face.

But Eddie decided that this time he had to be civil, not because of proper moral etiquette, but because V was being a bitch and wouldn't have his back today.

With a Walking Dead stagger, Eddie managed to get through his apartment without fracturing any toes. Slamming his front door open, the mother of all hangovers took on its final form.

The migraine surfaced up like fucking Calypso, Goddess of the Seven Seas.

His apparently new neighbour and her extremely loud opponent paused in their fighting to witness the disheveled form of Eddie Brock dying in pure agony. Both the young woman and the Arab guy, who Eddie vaguely remembered as his first floor neighbour, were not impressed by his imitation of the dead and immediately retreated back into their heated argument. The high-pitched anger combined with the Arab's loud accusations about a missing sheep, opened up another portal of hell for Eddie.

"Could you two please keep it down?" Eddie pleaded and was even ready to fall on his knees and beg for quietness, if that was what it would take.

"This sharmouta stole our sheep!" The Arab loudly snapped, pointing at the furious young woman, "where's your respect?"

"Respect?!" The girl seemed ready to explode, "I have zero respect for animal cruelty! You're planning to butcher the poor thing, that's illegal! Criminal! Immoral!"

"Illegal?! It's a sheep!" The jaw of the Arab dropped, astounded by the young woman's clear lack of common sense. "And we don't butcher it; we sacrifice it, to celebrate the end of Ramadan. It's our holy month and you're lucky I haven't called the police yet!"

"Oh, do it! Knock yourself out!" The young woman snarled, firmly blocking the entrance of her apartment with her body, "and don't forget to mention how you were planning to slit that innocent creature's throat in your bathroom! The cops will love that!"

Eddie's first floor neighbour cursed something in his mother tongue and reached into his pocket for his phone, pressing digits while the young woman crossed her arms and laughed.

"They won't find her anyways!" she scolded with a wry grin plastered on her face, "you'll be making a fool out of yourself. It's pretty far-fetched, isn't it? A modest young thing such as myself breaking into your house to steal a sheep, did you find any signs of a forced entry? No, I guess you haven't!"

The Arab's fingers froze and he yanked his phone back into his pockets. "I know it was you, I know you've been to my house; my son told me how you tried to bribe him into seeing the sheep!"

"That still doesn't prove a thing!" The young woman bit back. "So go ahead and call, let's see who the cops believe. I've taken two years of drama and expressive art in community college, I can cry on the spot!"

Veins seemed to pop on the head of Eddie's first floor neighbour and were it not for Eddie's interference; he would have pushed passed the girl to take back what was apparently rightfully his.

"Alright, alright!" Eddie hushed and moved in between his two infuriated neighbours, "holy month remember, holy month," scratching the back of his throbbing head, Eddie overheard the indistinguishable sound of a sheep's' muffled baaing coming from inside the woman's apartment.

Eddie's head involuntarily shot towards the source of the sound and V was suddenly back into a fully focused state.

"Not now!" Eddie hissed, receiving a questioning frown from the young woman, still using her body as a human shield against possible trespassers.

Ok, he seriously just wanted to crawl into a corner and sleep, or die. Or die in his sleep; he was open to all options.

Looking back and forth between both his neighbours, Eddie dug his hand into his pocket and took out his wallet.

"Here, how much is it to buy something halal and to forget about the sheep?" Eddie questioned, flipping through some bills. "It is the month of forgiveness, right?"

His first floor neighbour stared from Eddie, to Eddie's wallet, to the bitter young woman and then back to Eddie.

"More than that," the man stated, watching Eddie flip through more bills, "a little more than that."

'For fucks sake,' Eddie emptied his wallet to the last penny, mashed it into a little ball and handed it to his first floor neighbour.

"Have a happy Eid," Eddie chipped in as the man stored Eddie's money in his pocket, "please be quiet the rest of the day, for my sake."

The man nodded, then glared at the young woman behind Eddie and raised his index finger.

"Because it's our holy month, I will forgive you for this, but I will not forget! Don't come anywhere near my family or apartment again," the man nodded back to Eddie, "Salam."

"Yeah, salam to you too," Eddie responded not having the slightest clue what the man had said, but it was apparently a form of goodbye as his first floor neighbour retreated down the stairs.

"Well, that went smoothly," a suddenly bubbly voice commented behind Eddie, "Hi, I'm Tia."

As Eddie turned around, his new neighbor stuck out her hand, "Eddie," he grunted through his teeth and shook hers with a sweaty, shaky hand.

"You look like crap Eddie," the young woman pointed out, looking him up from head to toe; Eddie also took that time to stare at the obvious fruitcake in front of him.

Her petite frame didn't indicate that she'd been kidnapping a sheep and keeping it hostage inside of her apartment. Her blonde hair in pigtails added another feature of childish innocence, yet the smug grin and triumphant glint behind her bright blue eyes gave her away.

"We're not allowed to keep pets," Eddie felt it necessary to share when their silence and staring contest started to get uncomfortable.

"Then it's a good thing I don't have any," the young woman reassured him, giving him a toothy smile. Eddie noticed she had a chipped right canine and that she tried to flat out lie to him.

"Oh you don't have a sheep in your apartment?" Eddie raised an eyebrow. Seriously, he'd spent his weekly allowance for food to temper down a neighbourly fistfight, "then where do those obvious baa's come from?"

Tia scrunched her nose, "those darn drain pipes!"

Ok so she was seriously going to play this game?

"There is shit in the corner," Eddie pointed out.

"This city truly has a massive rat problem," Tia exclaimed with a sigh, stepping over her doorstep, "thank you for saving this damsel in distress Eddie, you're a true hero. Gatto go. Bye."

The door was slammed shut in his face before Eddie could respond. A little baffled, he stared at the peephole in front of him and overheard the tottering of tiny hooves over wooden floor panels.

We want to touch it Eddie, V whined, its black mass trailing over the outline of the apartment door.

"This is an apartment complex, not a fucking petting zoo," Eddie muttered, feeling lightheaded again. With the same zombie-like stagger, he got back into his apartment, took a carton of milk from the fridge, sniffed it, tasted it, decided it was still decent enough and retreated to his dingy couch.

A bowl was dragged into view by tentative tendrils, a spoon followed as well as a box of Reese Puff's cereal.

"I'm not going to eat V," Eddie batted at the objects being deliberately shoved in his face. Venom stirred underneath his skin, sending out a wrench inside his stomach.

"You do the fixie, I do the feedie," Eddie mumbled, switching on their TV.

...Spineless… Venom thoughtfully formulated inside his head. But the alien didn't budge and soon Eddie's hangover turned tolerable.

"Shut up and pick a movie," Eddie nudged the remote towards their Netflix account, which had been a subject of one of their fights. First it was called plainly Eddie, then when Eddie woke up one morning it was called Venom, so he changed it back to Eddie out of spite. The day after, their account was renamed Venom and Pussy and it outraged Venom when Eddie switched it to Eddie and Leech.

To prevent a war, their account was now named Symbrock, which actually sounded a lot cooler then Eddie gave Venom credits for.

"I guess we did a good deed today," Eddie said reminiscing about their empty wallet, "and we didn't decapitate anyone."

Yet, it's still early, V informed Eddie.

"Nah. I'm not in the mood to fight crime today love, let's stay in, have a movie night. There's tater tots and pizza in the freezer," he added to lure Venom. Luckily his symbiote was easy to please. Covering Eddie's right hand with a black mass, V started flipping through movies until he settled on season two of Friends. The show intrigued Venom, trying to grasp the concept of roommates, dwelling on the characters obvious shortcomings and cheesy jokes. Eddie followed the show with only half an eye, huddling into a fetal position and staring up at the onyx claw that mindlessly brought spoons full of Reese towards V's grotesque mouth.

This scene should creep him the fuck out, because it could have come straight from a horror movie; the main character in a fetal position, possessed by an alien entity with huge white eyes, a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth and a long writhing tongue.

It should have been creepy, were it not for V practically purring from joy, because Reese' cereals were its favorite and while doing so, it rewarded Eddie by fixing the boo-boo in between his temples.

Sharing a life with a symbiote could be strangely fulfilling.

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