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Another day, another morning spent downing coffee, another round of headaches for Natasha to try and ignore even as they kept talking to her.
Though, ever since the teenager joined them, the headaches seemed to come even more often than usual.
“Hey, hey! Spider-Mom! I got something to tell you!”
There was another one, grinding its way into her cortex as she stared at her reflection in the glass wall of the office suspended above the gym. Natasha rolled her eyes as Peter waved up at her from below, as if his call hadn’t already managed snag her attention away from something, anything more important.
“I thought you told him to stop calling me that,” she said to the only other one in the office with her, the one who thought it was a good idea to bring a teenager in to help save the world in the first place.
“I did,” Tony said, knocking back a fistful of chocolate drops. “Didn’t say he listened to me.” He talked with his mouth stuffed as he kicked his feet off his so-called desk (more like a slab of metal he hacked into a workspace) and stood up, fully intending to abandon her to dealing with his bad decisions. “Good luck with him. I helped him raid the vending machine earlier. Growing boy ‘n all. Probably got enough sugar in him to outrun Banner on a bad day.” He left just as Peter finished the climb up the stairs, out one door as the kid burst panting through the other. Either he’d ran all the way across the complex and up the stairs to find Natasha, or the sugar was sending his poor soul into overdrive. She made a note to put all the vending machines out of order when she got the chance.
“Er… will Mr Stark be coming back?” Peter pointed towards the door Tony had just escaped through. He seemed to have a second sense (or ‘spider sense’ as he called it) for telling when his mentor was trying to be anywhere else that he didn’t have to show too much responsibility.
Natasha sighed. On one hand it was a dick move on Tony’s part, but on the other she just envied him. Not cause she had anything against the kid. She just didn’t like… kids in general. They were distractions. Bad thoughts. Regrets.
“Knowing him, probably not,” she answered, resigning herself to the seat Tony had just vacated. If he was gonna make her listen to Peter’s sugar-high rambling, she at least deserved to make herself comfy.
“Ah. Shoot.” Peter’s utter innocence, the way he kicked the hard soles of his suit against the soft red fabric over his ankle. It wasn’t the suit Tony made for him; he only wore that when he knew he’d be getting shot at. When he was in the base, wherever he thought he felt safe, he went with fabric.
“That sucks,” he went on, swinging himself idly between Rhodey’s and Cap’s thankfully empty desks. “Cause I kinda… needed to talk to him, too. But it’s okay! No big deal! I’ll just tell you!”
He looked so excited, and that alone was a red flag. Whatever got the teenager excited would just be a normal Tuesday for the average Avenger.
“Peter…” The tone of her voice made his face sink, and she ended up hating herself for it. Dammit, now she knew why Tony had brought him in.
“I know you’re real busy, Ms Romanov,” Peter said, pleaded even as he straightened up and tried to be serious. “I do, but this is really really important. Trust me.”
Trust him. Natasha had heard that before more times than she could count. And she’d accepted it from a lot worse than the wide-eyed boy from Queens shaking in front of her.
“Alright,” she said, leaning back in Tony’s chair far enough to make it creak. “Make it quick.”
Peter blinked, as if he didn’t expect for her to actually listen. But now that he had her, he wasted no time as the words gushed from his mouth faster than it could even give them shape. “Okay… okay, well, so, uh… you know how you sent me to San Francisco last week?”
Natasha couldn’t help a smirk. “To track down the ‘oil monster’, yeah.” It had been Tony’s idea, to give him some experience outside of New York and to make it look like the Avengers were taking the stories of the so-called ‘San Fran Goo Man’ seriously (ever since the New York invasion they’d gotten reports of potential supervillains and E.Ts almost daily, but this one was the one that wouldn’t go away). Natasha had just been the one to tell Peter where to start, and when to come back.
“Well, get this, okay, I found him. And he’s actually pretty cool.”
Natasha’s smirk vanished, though Peter still grinned proudly. “...What do you mean you ‘found’ him?”
“I mean, I tracked him down,” Peter explained, not quite understanding why he wasn’t being congratulated for acing his mission. “And… talked to him. Good news is that he isn’t evil. I don’t think he is at least. I think he wanted to eat me at first but he seems okay now.”
Natasha had learned to deal with the unexpected, but even then it took her a few seconds longer than it should have for her to think of what to say. “Okay.... so he’s definitely real?”
“Oh yeah. Totally.” Peter was starting to look like the wooden bird bobbing up and down on Rhodey’s desk from how much he nodded. “But, but, he isn’t made of goo. Get this, okay, it’s actually an alien symbiote.” Peter whispered it as if it wasn’t common knowledge that everyone else in the galaxy wanted to turn the Earth into an intergalactic playground. Natasha was waiting for the training to kick in, for the right words to come to her lips. But there didn’t seem to be any right ones. If this was another Chitauri, or something else altogether…
She shook her head. Cleared her throat. Tried not to tip over into panic. “Alien?” she repeated.
“I know, I know,” Peter said, as if he was talking to someone who didn’t believe him. “It’s kinda crazy. He’ll explain it a lot better than I can.”
The shock must have dulled Natasha’s wits. It took her a second too long to clock what was wrong with Peter’s assurance.
“...Will he, now?” she asked, stressing the present tense. Peter suddenly looked very nervous.
“Uh… yeah, cause…” He rubbed at the back of his neck, and if he had his mask on his eye apertures would have been going haywire. “Cause he’s… kinda… sitting in the reception room right now.”
“ JESUS FUCKING CHRIST !” Tony’s scream came from down below, just as Natasha stood up to see him pelting back into the gym. She didn’t need to guess where he’d just came from.
“There’s... a monster out there!” he bellowed, pointing backwards towards the reception and jabbing the air with each sentence. “Big, big, scary monster. Talking to himself! Get it out of my base right now !”
“Ah, dammit, he said he’d stay normal if I got him inside!” Peter rushed back out the door and vaulted down the stairs, talking all the while and landing with a habitual backflip. Natasha might have been impressed at any other time. When she didn’t have to deal with an apparent alien in the foyer, Stark having another breakdown, and yet another headache threatening to crowd over the rest of them. Like Peter she took the short way down to the gym, landing just in front of the boys as Tony stood constantly looking back over his shoulder as word-vomit punctuated his frantic breaths.
“Kid, look, I dunno if I’m just getting old and this is some kinda youth culture millennial thing but there is nothing remotely normal about that. This coming from the guy who has a robot army in the basement.”
“C’mon, Mr Stark, I know he looks scary, but give him a chance!”
“I will give him a chance. In fact, I’ll give him more than that. I’ll give him ten seconds to vacate the premises before I call in an exterminator.”
Natasha heard them squabbling behind her, the familiar argument of a kid trying to convince his father to let him keep the rabid dog he just found. She only realised how fitting that thought was when she marched into the reception, literally just the turn of a corner outside the gym-
And saw him. It. Him? The shoulders alone wouldn’t have been able to fit through the front door, not without shattering the frame, yet behind him it looked intact. As he turned towards her, sensing her presence, the sunlight through the windows danced on the slick surface of his skin. No, not skin. More like slime, latex, black and liquid yet somehow moulded into solid muscles that tensed and coiled as he stood tall, tall enough to almost reach the ceiling.
Framed by those muscles, dripping saliva, a jagged grin greeted her below white eyes that swept up like tattered sails floating on tainted black water.
“Hello there.”
It was the friendliest snarl she’d ever heard, a built-in echo thundering in the abyss of his voice. Yet, funnily enough, he almost sounded human. More human than some the people Natasha had known. She blinked, briefly wondering how it saw her through those white crescents. Then she swallowed her surprise, even as it bloomed up again at the realisation that there was no fear lodged in her throat. Then she turned her head over her shoulder.
“Spider-boy?” she called out. “You gonna come introduce us?”
Whether it was to seize the opportunity to avoid more of Tony’s stinging disapproval or to prove that his new friend wouldn’t actually kill them all, Peter literally ran to Natasha’s side to make the introductions, pulling his mask at the same time. He ran so fast that when he stopped whatever it was on his soles that made him stick to things also acted like brakes, and almost had him falling forwards onto his face, the eye apertures in his mask whirring as wide as they’d go. But, bless him, he recovered.
“Er… Ms Romanov, this is the San Fran Goo Man,” he said. “Also known as Venom. Or Eddie, sometimes. I dunno, he kinda switches between them.”
“Whoever he is, he’s drooling all over my floor!” Tony had caught up to them, in body if not in mind, keeping a safe distance while the Venom creature narrowed his glistening eyes. He seemed to only just notice that yes, there was a literal puddle of drool underneath him.
“Yeah, he... does that a lot.” Peter cleared the space between himself and Venom, though he was careful to skirt around the saliva pool as he leaned in to hiss, “Dude, you promised you wouldn’t go monster-mode!”
Venom hissed back, more like a gurgle, as he leaned down to Peter’s eye-level and heaved his massive shoulders up in a shrug. “Sorry. We smelled food.” Something thin and pink flicked out from between the jagged peaks of his fangs, and he seemed to glance at Natasha. Tasting the air as he saw her. Perhaps wondering why she wasn’t shaking.
“And what exactly do you define as food, licorice man?” Tony had conquered his fear of drooling maws to at least come to Venom’s floor level. “We just a walking talking buffet to you or something?”
Venom narrowed his eyes, the white simply disappearing into the viscous black, and the growl that rumbled out almost covered up the whisper that overlapped it.
“I told you this was a bad idea, V.”
Like there was a switch thrown in his anatomy, Tony reached out a hand to jab an accusing finger at the alien. “See what I mean! Talking to himself! And there’s only room for one person with schizophrenic tendencies around here-”
Like Natasha herself, Venom didn’t seem to be listening to him.
“Eddie, isn’t this the one who got you blacklisted in New York?” His eyes wandered, as if drifting across his oily surface, while he head dipped into his shoulder. Like he was talking to an angel or devil perched there.
The whisper answered him through what sounded like clenched teeth. “Not the time, man...”
Natasha cocked her head. So there were two parts two different voices to Venom? One of them must have been Eddie. The human element in the equation. But how much of the equation was him, and how much of it was the alien? She kept her distance for now, needing more intel before she could step in. Besides, Tony looked like he was about to get himself into trouble. She wouldn’t dare interrupt a process like that.
“-so, Spider-boy,” Tony turned to Peter, who at last looked like he’d finally realised his mistake,
“if you could be so kind as to find the giant hole this guy got in through and escort him back through it-”
Venom moved. And when he moved, even just to take a step forwards, the room shook. The windows were still rattling when he was close enough to loom over Tony.
“You think we are the monster here, hm?” From his glossy predator grin he uncurled his tongue, pink and glistening and far too big to feasibly fit in his mouth, just to swipe it around his fangs and remind everyone that they were there. “You, Stark, who fueled wars just to line your pockets with more blood money?” He brought a hand up, its giant palm hidden beneath a clutch of claws as he pointed at Tony with one of them. Just pointed. When it came within striking distance, Tony was smart enough to step backwards, not caring that he stumbled since he knew he could easily cover it up.
“Don’t... touch me, okay? This suit probably cost more than whatever spaceship got you here in the first place.” There it was, the little rich boy that always hid behind the iron shell. Natasha tried not to roll her eyes, though it hardly mattered since only Venom was facing her and he only had eyes for the challenge before him.
“And we could still tear right through it to get to your heart,” he told Tony. “ Or, whatever it really is that’s pounding away in your chest. Thudding with blood... juicy arteries…” His tongue emerged again, flaring out in anticipation, and Peter started to panic.
“Oh jeez. Oh, boy, this is bad…” He keep his eyes on the Iron Man and the alien man as he made to retreat. Natasha watched him running backwards towards the gym. She knew he wasn’t really abandoning his responsibility while it was about to munch on his mentor, so she turned her attention back to the upcoming horror show.
“You done yet, Hannibal?” Tony asked in an enviable deadpan. “Cause we have a planet to protect, and you look like you have a dentist to go see.”
“Keep staring like that and you’ll see our teeth for yourself.” Venom leaned down and stretched his jaw out to give him a front-row seat to his impending death. “Or maybe you’d rather be wearing your eyes around your neck by their retinas. Either can be easily arranged.”
“Don’t make me use this, Eddie!” Peter had returned, as Natasha expected, with his backpack in one hand and a cell phone held aloft in the other. Venom put his jaw back on its hinge.
“...What is that?”
“It’s my emergency phone,” Peter announced, “and the ringtone is really loud and annoying!”
Natasha groaned. It had gone off so many times during his first week at the compound that she knew exactly how annoying it was. Even then, she didn’t quite see how some piercing chiptune jingle would be a threat to someone as big as the Hulk, and just as cranky.
Cranky, and hungry. He smelled food...
Tony had food, the pouch of chocolate in his hand. Though, he seemed to have forgotten about it in the wake of the extraterrestrial pissing match. Venom’s drool was starting to pile up. Because he was hungry. And she knew firsthand what torture being taunted by food just out of reach was.
And just like that, she’d solved the problem.
“Okay, boys, that’s enough.” She wedged herself between them both, forcing some distance as she pushed against and faced the one she was most experienced with disarming. “Tony, give him the candy.”
He looked at her as if she’d just asked for her own iron suit. “‘Scuse me?”
“He’s hungry,” she said. “So give him the candy, before he eats something you actually will miss.”
Tony blinked, looked down at the candy, and gave a defeated scoff.
“Heads up, Oozy.” He clearly aimed it at Venom’s head as he gave an overhand toss, but the alien’s neck didn't so much turn as the whole head flowed in a different direction, like water rushing into a gap that was suspended in the air. The jaws unhinged and caught the whole bag, the wild tongue pushing it down a cavernous throat. He didn't even chew as he licked his lips.
“Mmh. Much better.” His grin was almost genuine now, though always genuinely unnerving.
Tony blinked again, much more rapidly this time. As if only realising how close his head had come to being nothing more than a bag of chocolate drops. “Right. Okay. Back to my point about having a ravenous alien in the building-”
“I got this,” Natasha told him, paying no heed to how much his suit was worth as she pushed him out the room. “You go tinker with your boy toys and I’ll make sure he stops leaving a mess everywhere.”
Tony gave up a feeble struggly against her, but like most men he was smart enough not to argue. “Y’know what? I will go tinker with them, and I’m gonna come back here in a new one that’ll kick his greasy ass back to whatever planet he came from. And Peter, I’m taking those nanotech webshooters back!”
Poor, poor Spider-boy. He looked like someone had just flushed him down the drainpipe. “Wha-? Mr Stark! C’mon, I was just getting the hang of them!”
“Oh, were you now? Did you practice them on your new friend over there?” Tony finally left, with Peter trailing after him like a kicked puppy. Natasha waited until they were both out of sight, then she moved in. When she’d separated Venom from Tony, she’d felt the heat of his breath against her back. Heard his lungs, or whatever it was pushing the scorching air out, creak and hiss within the roiling black of his body. Most of all, she’d felt him watching her. As if the whites swirling in the black were physically creeping close to her when she wasn’t looking. If he, the alien or human inside him, knew who she was, what she was, it made no difference to either of them. In Tony’s own words, he looked at her like she was a buffet.
Natasha wasn’t moved. She’d been seen as a whole lot worse before.
“So. Venom.” She crossed her arms over her chest, subtly revealing the armoured cuffs on her wrists. “Our little spider brought you here all the way from California?” She’d get a proper debrief out of the kid later, when she’d decided whether or nor his pet was going to reduce the place to a slaughterhouse.
Venom was hunched over like an animal ready to pounce, but now he straightened and almost hit the ceiling. “I’m used to travelling.” He didn’t growl so much this time.
“I bet,” Natasha said. “Where are you really from?”
“Why do you ask?” He cocked his head, almost copying her from when she’d done the same to him. As if he’d been studying her as well. Natasha cleared her throat.
“Cause the last time Avengers dealt with aliens, they ripped a hole in the sky and caused a whole lot of issues that we’re still dealing with six years on.”
Venom’s stretched grin disappeared, swallowed up by the black as he pressed thin lips together. “Chitauri don’t get along with many species. Mine is no exception.”
She raised an eyebrow. So other aliens knew about the Chitauri. Good to know that Earth wasn’t the only world screwed over by them.
“So why’re you here?” she asked, idly circling him, keeping outside the drool puddle. “With us humble humans?”
He tracked her as she moved, swivelling his thick neck as the black swarmed and oozed across his muscles. “We think we can be useful.”
“‘We?’” She asked it to confirm her previous suspicions, taking in just how wide his shoulders really were from the back.
“Myself and my host,” he explained. “Eddie.”
Natasha completed her circuit around him, more than a little impressed. “Can I speak to him too?”
Venom narrowed his eyes, and she wondered if she’d just broken some kind of alien hospitality law. But they widened again, then narrowed, pulsing like a heartbeat as he leaned into his shoulder. Hearing something in the silence, other than his own rumbles and the drip from his tongue.
“...He’s scared of you,” he said, over an explosion of splutters.
“Don’t just go and tell her that, dude!” a hidden voice scolded. “What’s wrong with you?!”
Natasha just had to smirk. An ordinary guy way out of his depth, wrapping himself away from the world in something thick and tough. Eddie and Tony seemed to be more alike than either of them would’ve liked to admit.
“The guy with the giant alien on his side is scared of me ?” she asked, and she only wished she could have seen the face that was making mortified noises within Venom. The alien tried to shush its host and seize back control on his behalf.
“Aren’t you... scared of us ?”
She thought about it for a moment- more like a second, really- and shrugged. “No. Should I be?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On just how heroic you Avengers really are.” This time he leaned in. Daring her to flinch away as his jaw opened, lips spread apart, fangs jutting forward like broken glass. He could have taken her face off in seconds with them. But he wouldn’t. She knew that, and he knew it too. So what did she have to be scared of? Sure, he was from outer space, but this was Earth. She knew of things on Earth much worse, much more credible to fear than whatever could come from space. He was no different. He was a curiosity, an oddity, but not a threat. Not to her, at least.
So she watched him grin, and he watched her right back. A single strand of drool broke off from the cage of teeth and dipped under its weight, hanging limp like a spider’s web before being pulled down to the ground and splattering there. She watched it fall, and only then saw red boots marching through the reception’s front door.
“Natasha, do you know where Tony has hidden my shield this ti-? GAAH!” Steve’s cry of terror was not from seeing the alien in the room. From the sound of the hard thud that followed it, she could tell he'd just slipped on the slippery floor. Or maybe he'd seen Venom and then slipped. Natasha would ask him once he’d stopped groaning like the sixty year old man he really was.
“Clean up on aisle Cap!” Oh, Peter had returned once again. He stood pointing at the senior citizen rather than offering any kind of assistance to help him back up. Natasha made several decisions very quickly.
“Spidey,” she said, “get a wet floor sign.”
“On it!”
“And you.” She pointed to Venom, holding back from poking his chest out of curiosity. “Downstairs in the sparring ring, twenty minutes. I wanna see how you fight. Try and shrink down, if you can.” With that, she left all three of them to sort themselves out. After this long working with some of these people, she’d learned that sometimes that was all she could do.
Well, that and hanging back just out of sight to hear anything that she otherwise wouldn’t have.
“We like her, Peter. Is she single?”
“Uh. I think so. Wait, why’re you-? Oh. Oh, no. Dude. No. She’ll kill you. Both of you.”
“Seems worth the risk.”
“No it is fucking not!”
“Quiet, Eddie, you’re gonna blow it for us!”
Once again, Natasha found it hard not to smile. She was used to men falling for her, but she’d never thought an alien would be just as susceptible.
Was that a bad thing…? That was one decision she hadn’t made yet.