Chapter Text
Scott wasn’t able to declare victory over Hope very often. Thanks to years of dedicated training, she was naturally more talented and intuitive than Scott in, well, most aspects.
So when, by random chance, Scott captured evidence corroborating a local conspiracy, he was delighted to throw it in her face.
“Look!” he exclaimed, steering Hope in the direction of his monitor. “Look at that and tell me that’s not a monster.”
Hope dutifully stared at the somewhat blurry image on the screen. Squinting or sharpening didn’t make the picture any clearer. She scrunched her nose up in confusion.
“And what am I supposed to be looking at?” she asked dryly. “Some weightlifter swinging around in a morphsuit?”
Scott huffed indignantly. “No, look,” he insisted. “One of our street ants caught this thing on camera last night. No editing, it’s only in frame for about three seconds before it flies out of view. But our cameras caught it, Hope!”
This explanation, at least, seemed to anchor Hope’s interest. Tapping the screen to zoom in, she examined the dark shape in the picture more closely.
Their camera ants brought back footage regularly; mostly it all got filtered away as spam, but every once in a while the algorithm (which Hank had written, and which Scott didn’t understand at all) pinged, and clips of ‘unusual activity’ were flagged for them to check out.
Last night’s recording, randomly captured around 1 a.m. by a routine patrol ant, was by far the weirdest thing they’d caught on film. Huge, muscular, and swinging from one roof to the next like some kind of acrobat, the figure on camera had only passed over their ant for a short moment.
Most of the thing was dark, but standing out starkly on its face, reflecting street lights like glass, were unmistakably sharp teeth.
Hope’s finger lingered on the screen, tracing over the fierce white line of the thing’s grin. She was quiet, considering, before turning back to Scott.
“So, probably not human,” she agreed, arms crossing, “but you think it’s something worth investing, don’t you?”
“Don’t I?” Scott parroted disbelievingly. “Of course we should investigate, god, look at that thing’s teeth!”
“I see the teeth. I also see it flinging itself around buildings. What I don’t see is any kind of destruction, blood, chaos, etc.” She ticked fingers off on her hand as she went on, seemingly immune to Scott’s increasingly incredulous expression.
“The teeth, Hope! It’s just like Luis was telling me—”
“Oh, come on—”
“—No, really, this time. He heard from someone who’s still locked up, who heard from a gang member’s brother, that there’s been something targeting criminals. Something big that’s eaten, like, three people!”
“Eaten?” Hope’s skeptic interest in this story weighed over into disbelief. “You’d think if something like this was eating people, we’d hear about it. Or see some of the evidence. You really think a body with a big bite taken out of it wouldn’t be lighting up the media?”
That threw Scott for a second, but still. “Maybe,” he said, “if there was anything left. Maybe it eats whole, entire people.”
Hope pulled the monitor around, gesturing at the blurred black figure on screen. “That’s a whole lot of maybe’s for a thing that’s just swinging around buildings, Scott. You’re basing this all on another one of Luis’ stories.”
Scott held his ground. “One of his wild stories is what led me to the damn suit in the first place,” he argued.
A truce. Hope sighed, staring at the computer with far-away eyes. With the tension fizzling out, Scott realized he’d been holding himself stiff, spine rod-straight and fists clenched at his side.
He took a deep breath of his own, forcing tensed muscles to relax. Bumping heads wasn’t going to help anything when the only thing that tended to work on his partner was evidence.
Maybe Luis’ stories were true, and maybe there was a big monster swinging around the city. Both of these things could be true, and yet Hope was right: just because this thing had big teeth didn’t mean it was going around ripping into people.
Trying to start something without any facts to go off of tended to get Scott in trouble. And besides, having spent his own fair amount of time in jail, he knew throwing around accusations like that could destroy peoples’ lives.
Even if the ‘people’ in this case wasn’t really a person. Ah, well: they were in the age of superheroes and super freaks, after all.
Hope leaned over the counter, clicking out of the footage. “I’ll ask Hank about changing our algorithm,” she said. “Maybe switch it around so we’re listening or looking for things related to… big, creepy, biting monsters.”
Scott smiled, taking the olive branch for what it was. “Good, great.” That was as much as he could ask for, really. “I’ll, uh… Ask Luis if he knows anything about where those rumors came from. Maybe we could investigate closer to that gang he was talking about.”
His partner’s expression grew both pitying and hopelessly amused. “Have fun getting anything out of his stories,” she teased. “We know Luis is all facts and reliable sources.”
She was right, and it was the worst. Scott groaned audibly, and Hope’s smile spread into a wide, victorious grin.
Even when Scott got what he wanted, he still lost to Hope. Still, Scott was satisfied that she was at least taking him seriously.
Gathering info through their ants and focusing on anything to do with that monster was a damn good place to start. Not to mention, it was probably saving Scott’s ass: with teeth like that, Scott didn’t want to confront it without plenty of information on their side.
That was how Team Ant did things: they didn’t rush in like idiots. They gathered intel and acted strategically, and they trusted each other to follow the plan and to have each other's backs.
It wasn’t a plan with any immediate action on his part, but Scott placated himself with the fact that they would be able to figure this out as soon as they could.
One month later, Scott followed Captain America to Germany, kicked a few Avengers around an airbase for the sake of the greater good, and found himself shut away on a waterlocked prison.
One month later, Hope shoved Scott’s things out of sight and out of mind. She focused on her own suit and worked out missions with her father, and when she thought about Scott it was only ever in the context of hurt and frustration.
The clip the two of them had flagged remained buried for months, dormant, while Venom was anything but.
Venom thrived.
Eddie smiled awkwardly at Anne and Dan from across the table, fidgeting with one of the restaurant napkins in his lap. His hands were wringing the poor fabric, restless, while unease crawled along his skin.
“...That’s right, isn’t it?” Anne turned bright eyes on her boyfriend, face open in a smile.
Dan nodded. “It does get harder at her age,” he agreed with whatever she’d been saying.
Eddie bit his lip. The two of them had been talking about a particularly eccentric coworker of Anne’s, a legal secretary in her late 40s that couldn’t hold onto a boyfriend. Every other week, it seemed, she had some new partner that she assured the office was the love of her life.
The three of them (four, technically) were just exchanging weird work stories. It was a part of their new routine, intent on including their friends in his and V’s life. Eddie made an effort to meet up with the other two at least once a week.
Anne’s crazy coworker nursing delusions about a Plenty of Fish hookup weren’t anything personal. She hadn’t made a single subtle dig at all whenever she brought the woman up, and yet for some reason the anecdotes put Eddie on edge.
Across the table, Dan and Anne laughed at something the latter had said. Eddie’s leg twitched.
Eddie? his other inquired gently. They’d been paying attention to the story, curious and baffled by the woman Anne described, before picking up on his steadily growing distress.
They prodded at the upset gently, confused. Eddie mentally shook himself, taking a deep breath, holding it, and exhaling slowly. It’s alright, he assured them.
Although V must have sensed that it obviously wasn’t alright, they thankfully let the matter drop. Based on how Eddie was acting, it wasn’t hard to pick up that whatever reaction he was having, it was private.
Wordlessly they passed reassurance along their bond. Eddie accepted the feelings gratefully, trying to focus himself on the here and now.
“—Eddie?”
He jolted out of his stupor, blinking stupidly at Anne. She was looking at Eddie expectantly, brows raised.
“Uh. Yes?” he said. Opposite the table, Anne’s expression remained unimpressed.
“Yes, huh? I didn’t know alien marriage was legal yet.”
Eddie sputtered. “What! Okay, okay, I wasn’t listening. You know I wasn’t. Sorry.” The last bit he offered as genuinely as he could. It wasn’t his fault that he tended to get lost in his head, but the least he could do was try to make up for zoning out.
Anne eyed him curiously, eyes sharp. “I was saying,” she said slowly, “that you and V are a lot more stable than Barbara. And then I was asking—joking—if you two planned on tying the knot any time soon yourselves.”
Traitorously, Eddie’s heart did a somersault in his chest.
It was outlandish at best, a fever dream, but for half a second his mind couldn’t help but start to form that image. A church, of course, the setting, with him wearing his other as a fine suit, and his family—
Where is that? the symbiote asked innocently. What is that?
Eddie banished the illusion from his mind like putting out a fire. To even entertain something like that felt indescribably forbidden, simultaneously beautiful and repulsive.
Nothing, he dismissed sharply.
At his distress and his harsh tone, his other coiled sadly in his gut. Guiltily, Eddie rubbed at his stomach. Sorry .
No response. Maybe they still felt how raw the topic was for him.
Eddie smiled ruefully at Anne. “C’mon, you know that isn’t even on the board. Not for me and definitely not for them, ha.”
Before Anne had time to pick up on Eddie’s real feelings on the matter, he hurried to change the topic. “Barbara couldn’t be seriously thinking about marriage after a week, could she?”
The bait was too good not to bite, and Anne gleefully continued her Tale of the Insane Coworker. It was bizarre and entertaining: she hadn’t meant anything personal by talking about how her associate was too old to not be settling down.
That’s what he repeated to himself as he headed back to his and V’s apartment. He focused on the roads, on the humm of his bike underneath him, of what to do for dinner, anything but thinking too deeply on Anne and Dan’s comments.
A church stood innocently off the curb of a stoplight. Eddie determinedly didn’t look at it.
This evading didn’t go unnoticed by his other. They sensed the direction of his frustration, turning their attention to the tall stone building to their right. Nothing in particular stood out to them about it, aside from their host’s purposeful misdirection.
Eddie, they nudged, urging him to elaborate on the building and his apparent avoidance of it. Eddie ignored them.
They didn’t like being ignored, especially when it concerned Eddie being upset. Overtaking Eddie’s hands in smooth black gloves, they took control of their body and steered the bike around the corner into the building’s parking lot.
“What the—what the fuck!” he exclaimed. His hands flew off the bars like they burned, but the damage was done: they were already at the building, and the symbiote planned on getting answers.
Wouldn’t tell me about the building, they argued. Can tell it makes you upset. Like the fantasy earlier.
Before he could stop himself, Eddie blurted, “It wasn’t a fantasy !”
The denial fell flat, but he was immediately aware of how loud he’d been. Eddie checked the parking lot quickly to make sure no one was paying attention.
Thankfully it was empty, but Eddie eyed the cars scattered throughout suspiciously. Given that it was a Sunday afternoon, mass would be long over, but he would bet on some of its congregation lingering in the lobby or the basement.
He swung himself off the bike, peering up at the church in distaste. They were already here, and it was the closest place he could see where they were likely to find some privacy that wasn’t a fuckin’ bathroom, but still. It loomed over him.
It’s beautiful, his other said.
Eddie flinched; it was beautiful, but it wasn’t for him, not anymore. He shook his head, trying to rattle out the rusty thought that his father had planted.
Without another word, he strode up to the church. It was all stone, sturdy and arching and spired, like every other religious relic. When he nudged the front door open to the lobby, faint voices and laughter carried up from stairs off to the side.
The lobby gave way to the nave of the church, where the congregation must have gathered earlier that day. Pews lined the room by the dozens, some of them shifted out of place like crooked teeth.
It was big. Eddie felt small.
Eddie, his other spoke for the first time since they’d entered the building. They sounded reverent. This is the place from your not-fantasy!
“It’s not the same church,” Eddie whispered hurriedly. So many churches looked the damn same, it was no surprise V couldn’t immediately tell the difference.
Given that this was a Catholic church, the similarities between it and the church immortalized in his mind from childhood were obvious: the same faded gold lined much of the wood, the same saints stared down from stained glass, even the incense smelled the same.
A part of him expected to glance back and see Carl Brock kneeling beside a pew, even now. In his memory, he was always frowning.
His other twined out of his spine, coming to float in front of his face. For a moment, caught up in his recollection, Eddie could only stare at them. He felt like his feet were planted in the past, and his mind dragged like syrup.
Then his symbiote opened their maw and licked a huge stripe up his face, chin to hair.
Sputtering, Eddie shoved them away. “Eugh, V, not here,” he hissed. He glanced hurriedly to make sure the nave was still empty, half expecting a priest to pop out from behind the altar.
“It worked,” they murmured, thankfully quiet and ducking around his neck like a scarf. Eddie hummed his confusion at that statement absentmindedly, but started toward the corners of the room, looking for somewhere more secluded.
“You were trapped in thought, so I pulled you out,” they clarified. They even had the gall to sound satisfied about it.
“Because licking me up in public is the best way to do that,” he mumbled. He peeked around a corner at the back end of the nave, a tucked-away area hiding a single door.
His other wheezed a deep chuckle against his throat where they were ducked out of sight. “Haven’t licked you up in public yet, Eddie, but I would if you want me to.”
“Oh my god,” Eddie muttered. That was enough to make him blush, especially given their location. “Can you not say those things in a church? I already feel like I’m gonna catch fire just walking into this place.”
“Wouldn’t let you catch on fire. I would stop it.”
“I know, darling. I wasn’t being literal.” He wasn’t being literal, but the fact that his symbiote had taken to indecent euphemisms did make him feel like he was burning.
The inconspicuous door he’d found was thankfully what he’d been looking for. Like all the other big Catholic churches Eddie had been to, this one had their own Blessed Sacrament Chapel.
It was a small room, only furnished by three rows of pews and the altar at the front holding the church’s tabernacle. Quiet settled over everything like dust.
This was a room meant for silent reflection and prayer, but Eddie wasn’t here to talk to God.
He gripped one of the heavy wooden pews and pushed it to the side so that it was pressed against the door, effectively blocking it just in case anyone tried to barge in.
With their privacy assured, his other untwined from his neck, forming their own head to face Eddie in a proper conversation.
“This place makes you sad, but it was in your not-fantasy. Want to understand,” they pleaded. They sounded apologetic, but not regretful.
Eddie sighed, plopping himself into one of the dusty old pews. “You know what Anne was talking about, how that upset me?”
“About that foolish woman? Yes. Didn’t understand that, either.”
Eddie smiled at them ruefully. “You wouldn’t, because you don’t think I’m wasting away being how I am.”
The symbiote reeled back, white eyes gone wide. “Never! Why would I think that? We’re in pristine condition.”
Thinking back to the last words his father spoke to him, the words his other said were enough to make him laugh. “Pristine,” he sighed. “You’re the only one that thinks that.”
“Anne wasn’t talking about you , Eddie.”
“Not directly. But I know she thinks it, just like everyone else has thought it.”
His other peered at him. Distress poured off him from old wounds. They gathered themselves up from his spine and formed around him, holding him in their mass like they know Eddie liked to be held.
Eddie relaxed back into their bulk. The strength of it was always grounding, the kind of backing he’d need if they were unearthing buried grief.
He opened his mouth to start talking, but found his voice wouldn’t come out. Air choked in his throat, and he coughed around the block. His eyes watered, threatening to spill over.
“Eddie?” his other asked, startled at the sudden outpouring. “Nothing in our throat…” They coiled around him in confusion, trying to heal something that they couldn’t find. Eddie pressed his hands to their face, stroking under their eyes.
“It’s not something physical,” he rasped. He cleared his throat, breath still rough. V was uncharacteristically silent, allowing Eddie to gather himself.
In a place like this, it was too easy to get lost in the hate of his past. Eddie petted the symbiote rhythmically along their head, a familiar comfort in touching their slightly sticky, firm shape.
It had just a bit of give under his hands, and stuck to his fingers slightly whenever he pulled away. When the two of them had first bonded the feel of it had grossed him out; now he fell asleep holding onto them every night.
Time and chance had brought him and V close. If he had missed that chance, if he had floundered any longer without purpose and without connection, he could still remember what he had planned that day on that bridge:
To find a church, just like this one, and take his gun and press it under his throat.
The symbiote went taught around him. Black threads wrapped together at the ends, holding him tight in their grip.
“Would never let that happen.” Their voice was firm, even though the black tendrils around him trembled just slightly. “Even if you wanted to, wouldn’t let you do it.”
Eddie smiled, even though the situation didn’t warrant it. “I know you wouldn’t,” he murmured, pressing a chaste kiss to their teeth. “And I wouldn’t ever want to, not anymore.”
Their grip relaxed slightly, though they maintained their hold around him. “Still has nothing to do with what Anne said.”
“It’s just… I’m a fuckup, you know that. I ruined what I had with Anne, I lost my job, I was single before her since college, and I haven’t spoken to my father in, god, six years?”
“You can’t find him?”
Eddie laughed bitterly. “Oh, I know exactly where he is: the same suburban shithole he raised me and my sister in. He plans to die in that house, but I’m not welcome back.”
His other was quiet. They were starting to get it, so Eddie kept going. “I’m a mess of a human. I’m almost 40 and I don’t have any damn family. It’s just like that woman we were talking about, just like my dad was saying since I was born—”
“Eddie—”
“—I’m a mistake of a person. My mom paid for my birth with her life, and how do I repay that?” Eddie made a cutting motion with his hand. “I snipped the fuckin’ family tree. I ruined any chances of having that.”
“You are not ruined.”
“Not for you ,” Eddie allowed, rough, but the high of his despair pulsed in his head like anger.
“Not for us.”
He and his other, tied together at the molecular level, until separation or death. His body had always and would always be perfect for them. Realization cooled his rapid heart. He repeated with reverence, “Not for you.”
Silence took over the room again. V was a liquid dark shadow braided around him; in a place like this, surrounded by gilded icons and sacred remains, the two twined together felt like an effigy.
His symbiote broke the silence. “I don’t see why the two of us are not a family. We live together, and we love each other, and we will be together forever.”
Eddie sighed. “We’re a couple, but not really a family.” He gestured to the church around them. “How I was raised, how a lot of the world sees it, a family is a man, a woman, and a bunch of kids. A marriage.”
“Much of the world is stupid. This has been established.”
“Oh, I know,” he huffed with a laugh. “But there’s some truth to it, y’know? Anne and Dan, they’re a couple, but they’re not a family yet, because there’s no kids to tie them together, and they’re not married.”
“I see.”
“Yeah.”
“In that case, it’s simple. We will get married.”
All the breath rushed out of Eddie. He would have liked to claim it was amusement, but that wasn’t right at all. It sounded too much like a sob for that.
“It’s...not that simple,” he said, throat tight. The emotions bubbling inside him at his symbiote’s comment felt like they were crawling up his windpipe.
The coils holding Eddie rippled with discontent. “Why is it not simple? You were going to marry Anne, and that was simple. Why will you not marry me?”
“Marrying Anne was never going to be simple —and hey, I managed to fuck that up anyway, so not a great comparison.”
V was undeterred. “We are already married, Eddie: at the molecular level, a marriage between minds. A human marriage is a mere formality compared to how the two of us are tied together.”
Eddie breathed deeply. “I know,” he murmured, hand still stroking his other’s face absentmindedly. “Darling, you know I would marry you if I could.”
Fleeting thoughts passed along their bond, notions of laws and tradition. V wasn’t a legally-existing person, not even a human, and a formal marriage acknowledging their bond would be impossible.
The symbiote was quiet at that. A part of them, despite annoying human regulations, was appeased with the private bond they shared. But they could still feel the deeply planted misery in Eddie that had taken root at a young age.
Over the years, over his transition and his family and fiance’s rejection, those roots had grown. The need to be a part of something bigger was a seed at the core of Eddie’s being.
He no longer had a place in his birth family, and the family he’d faintly considered growing with Anne was long out. The symbiote fulfilled so much of this need, Eddie finding meaning in being half of Venom, but a part of him yearned for more.
They would be that more. Eddie needed family—they would be that family, or a part of it.
“The other option,” they said. “You said another way one could create a family would be getting children.”
“Having children,” Eddie corrected automatically, then the words registered and he caught himself. “Wait, what? That would be something you’d want ?”
Never had he felt anything resembling a paternal instinct coming from his other. V’s world was, literally, Eddie. Sure, they had mutually discovered their passion for vigilantism, and they devoured romantic comedies and food-centric television, but the bond between the two of them actually gave them life.
To think that they would even consider something like having kids was outlandish.
“Klyntar do not traditionally have children; we spawn, fully formed, and immediately seek a host. I myself have spawned five times—”
Eddie felt the floor drop out from under him. “Excuse me?! You’ve—you’ve had kids ?”
“No,” they pressed, “I’ve spawned, involuntarily. Five symbiotes extracted forcibly from my being.”
The words ‘extracted forcibly’ hung in the air. The specifics of how separate beings could be ‘extracted’ were alien to Eddie, but the idea of being forced to reproduce, and then separated from those children…
He didn’t know he could, but Eddie found himself hating the Life Foundation even more. A part of him wished Carlton Drake was still alive, just so that he and his other could bury their teeth in his throat.
Praying the question wasn’t insensitive, Eddie asked, “What happened to them?”
“As far as I am aware, they all perished during the various trials at the Life Foundation.”
Eddie swallowed. The only emotion he could sense from his other’s side of the bond was a faint regret at the spawn’s fate, but he himself was much more affected. He didn’t understand how they could discuss their own children being taken from them so casually.
His other seemed to pick up on his confusion. From the mass that held him, two tendrils emerged to thread through his fingers. Their hands held Eddie’s in place on V’s smooth black head.
“My sweet Eddie,” they cooed, “bursting with sentiment. Don’t need to be so sad: the spawn would be monstrous, born captive and in pain. Their demise was a mercy.”
“How can you say that?” Eddie asked desperately. Despite their reassurances, he was shaken at the knowledge that his symbiote had had their own children ripped from them, and then wiped out.
His pulse thudded. In V’s firm grip, his hands were clammy.
“They were never children,” they continued. "No part of them was human in that way. Still I mourned them. Rage and despair consumed me in my captivity. But they are gone, and now we are here.”
Eddie couldn’t get it. It felt like he was just grasping at another language. “After all that, you’re still. You’d still want spawn with me?”
The symbiote shook their head, a human gesture they’d picked up that displaced Eddie’s grip so that he and his other were holding hands in his lap.
“Not spawn. A family is a couple and children, you said. And you want a family. We’ll have children.”
“I don’t understand,” Eddie said, the words ringing hollow. This whole conversation felt like it was happening to someone else, like he was floating outside the grip of his symbiote and drifting out along the pews.
V considered him. Eddie could feel them weighing their words; they weren’t often that considerate, preferring blunt honesty and trampling over social niceties, so the knowledge that this was serious enough to warrant it set off anxious flutters in his stomach.
“I have said before that you affect me much the same as I affect you. I am able to create human-like parts, which are largely compatible with your own. This extends to more fundamental organic matter.”
Eddie blinked at them, understanding the words but not their meaning. Sensing this, V continued.
“We could have children, Eddie. You and I.”
For the second time in that conversation, it felt like Eddie had missed a step on a staircase and dropped through to the floor.
Ever since he’d transitioned, he’d considered himself a eunuch. Castrated, chemically, having grasped branches of the family tree and snapped them off through his own choices.
Even with Anne, though the two of them had only briefly discussed having children, the idea had always been adoption. Biological kids were out of the picture. It had become a central truth that overlaid any future plans.
As he’d settled into his life with his other, he’d found fulfillment in being a part of Venom. Worries about the future began to focus on not getting caught, on seeking out the absolute dredges of society, on keeping V satisfied with their routine.
Conventional plans—marriage, careers, kids—seemed so oddly insignificant in the face of being Venom, he’d never considered his other would be interested in things so seemingly mundane.
Those were all dreams he’d given up, mostly satisfied with being them. Now his symbiote extended the possibility of more.
He tried to tamp down on his heart jumping traitorously in hope, too used to doors being slammed in his face. But V didn’t lie, and despite every logical urge in Eddie to shut them down and explain why he couldn’t, he couldn’t help but consider ‘what if’.
What if he could have a family with his other? A life beyond the pursuit of their own bloody justice? What would that even look like?
Ignoring his best judgement, Eddie wet his lips and asked, “How would that work?”
Lydia gathered her bags, double checking to make sure she hadn’t left any of her tupperware behind. Cleanup had taken just as long as preparation, she thought wistfully. It was well past three p.m., and everybody but the Father had already headed home.
“Are you sure you don’t need any more help with the rest of it?” she tittered, lingering at the door to the stairs. Father Mallorey smiled.
“You can’t cleanup everything around here, Lydia. I know your back isn’t what it used to be.”
She frowned, stubborn, despite the truth of the statement. Just because she was old didn’t mean she couldn’t pull her own damn weight. She said as much to Father, and he laughed.
“You made the food!” he said, gesturing to the now-empty, long plastic tables the group had set up hours earlier. “You’ve more than pulled your weight. I appreciate all your help, but this is my job. Head home, Lydia.”
“Fine,” she huffed, shuffling her bags of tupperware around so she could get to the doors. She tugged it open, careful not to drop anything, but hollered back as she left, “I’ll see you at Wednesday Mass, Father! And this old bag plans to be there early!”
“You don’t need to be! I can set up myself!” he called back to her. Lydia, of course, ignored this, letting the door swing shut behind her.
The stairs were a challenge: she carefully trudged up one-by-one, trying to make sure nothing dropped while also trying not to trip over her own shoes. Maybe she should have made two trips, but she was already out the door, and damn if she was going to give Father Mallorey the impression she couldn’t get around by herself.
She was making good progress, but the top step at the upstairs carpet happened to have some give. Her foot caught on a lump of rug, and she gave a brief shout as she felt herself going down.
Mercifully, she never hit the floor. She heard a young voice shouting, “Careful!” and then surprisingly strong arms taking hold of her. Somehow, despite the two arms helping her up, the young man in front of her had also managed to secure all of her bags.
“Well, thank you!” she said, embarrassed but grateful. She squinted up at the young man that had helped her, curious, and asked, “And how on Earth did you catch my tupperware?”
“Tupperware?” he asked, glancing at the bags that had found themselves carefully propped up on the floor. “That’s what you have in those bags? How much do you have? ”
So he didn’t want to answer her question; fine by her, she supposed. Everyone had their little tricks, especially nowadays. Maybe this boy was one of those super-ed people, or however they were calling them, but that was certainly none of her business.
“I have enough,” she replied simply. At the short response, the boy laughed, scratching his neck self consciously.
“Yeah, alright, fair enough,” he said. Then he spaced out a bit, like he was listening to something that she couldn’t hear.
That was just as suspicious as the bags, but they made those MP3s so small now, she very well could be missing it. Nonetheless, she felt the need to let him know that he wasn’t as sly as he thought.
“And what are you listening to there?” she asked, gesturing at his expression. The man jumped, looking strangely anxious.
“Oh, uh, just my significant other,” he said, pointing at his ear. He tilted his head, and Lydia noticed a sleek black device that she couldn’t see earlier. They really made them discreet!
“How lovely, to get to have them in your ear whenever you’d like,” she said, and she meant it. They’d never had anything like that when she was a young lady.
The man smiled. “Yeah, I’m pretty much always connected to them,” he agreed. He stuck out his hand. “My name’s Eddie, by the way.”
She took it, noting his firm grip. “Lydia,” she offered. “I haven’t seen you around here before, Eddie. Are you new to our church?”
“Oh, not exactly. I was mostly just passing through.” He glanced around the lobby, then past her into the main congregation hall. “It’s beautiful. I was, uh, in the Sacrament Chapel. A good place if you need to think, or for a private conversation.”
Lydia nodded. Technically the Chapel was for personal prayer, but she was no stranger to the need for a place of sanctuary. “Trouble with your partner?” she asked kindly. So sue her, she was old and she couldn’t help but want to meddle.
Eddie blushed. Poor dear, she thought, but when your face goes dreamy listening to someone, you know they’re in deep. Eddie shook his head.
“Not exactly,” he said, cagey. His face was still all red, and Lydia absently noted that he was quite handsome. What a lucky lover that must be in his life.
“Well,” she said, gesturing ahead of her, “I do need some help getting these bags into my car, if you’d like to tell me about it on our way.” She didn’t need the help, but he had the look of a young man that would feel compelled to offer it.
“Of course,” he said, then stopped himself. “Uh, it’s kind of complicated though. And private.”
Lydia laughed, gathering her own fair share of her (many) bags. “Dear, I don’t need the details and I don’t claim to have the answers. But old age does lend itself to some good advice.”
“Right,” he murmured. He absently collected bags on his arms, his face getting that same far-away look as before.
Lydia decided to offer her first piece of advice: she snapped her fingers, loud, right in front of his face. Eddie jumped in surprise, startling to attention.
“First piece of wisdom,” she said, “is not to giveaway that you’re a lovelorn loon with a doohickey in your ear.”
“Right,” he sighed again, adjusting his grip on his bags. At least he realized now what he was getting into, she thought. Lydia led the way out the lobby doors, out into the parking lot.
“Now, tell me about what you two lovebirds are so in a tizzy about,” she prompted. Discreetly she steered the two of them the long way around so she’d have more time to offer the boy advice.
His brow furrowed, then he said, “We’re thinking about having kids.”
“Well!” Lydia exclaimed. “Congratulations to you both, or so I would say. But you seem torn up about it, don’t you?” She patted his arm with her free hand. “Don’t want them, dear?”
“I do want them,” he said, the words sounding like a dirty admission. He looked exhilarated just saying them.“It’s just, I never really thought it would be possible, and now it all seems like it’s possible so fast, it’s…”
So that’s the situation, she realized with a smile. A situation she was all too familiar with. Facing forward, she began saying, “When I was much younger, it wasn’t at all common for two women to be together.”
At this, she caught Eddie’s attention. He went from absentmindedly listening to focused, sharp as a whip. Lydia still wasn’t certain at the details of the situation, but she understood what that expression meant. She smiled up at him.
“Then in the 80s, very suddenly it seems, I found a woman and fell in love. I was already past my prime, she had a boyfriend, and I figured she’d want nothing to do with me in that way.
“But one day,” she continued, “she came up to me and she said, ‘Lydia, I left him, I’ve been too scared for too long, and I’m sorry for turning you away, because I feel the same way about you.’” She glanced at Eddie, who was still riveted upon her.
Lydia whacked one of her bags against Eddie’s leg gently. “What I’m getting at with this,” she stressed, “is that when everything you’re looking for comes along, you have to grab it with both hands and hold on tight, even if it seems too good to be true.”
Eddie blinked. His eyes looked a little wet, and Lydia knew at that that her guess had been right. He cleared his throat, and asked in a rough voice, “And what happened? With you and your girl?”
At this point they’d arrived at Lydia’s car. She placed her bags in the backseat and took the ones hanging on Eddie’s arms, shifting them into place. She smiled at him and said, “Well, she’s probably waiting for me at home, since I took much too long here today talking with a handsome young man.”
Eddie laughed, and grinned, and looked altogether pleased. He glanced down at his shoes on the pavement, the easy expression on his face softening. Gaze still downward, he asked her, “So you think I should go for it? Say damn the consequences and take the chance? Say yes to kids?”
“Hon, I wouldn’t dare to tell you to make a choice like that so suddenly. But if what’s holding you back is that it doesn’t seem like something so good could be possible, then I think you should look at your darling and realize: if I’m so lucky that they’d pick me, then it must be that good things are possible.”
“I am lucky,” he murmured. His head was still tilted down, but he had that dreamy look to his face from earlier that suggested he may be talking to his partner. “That they’d choose to stay with me over everything else, I’m. I’m already unbelievably lucky.”
Lydia nodded at him, satisfied. “Now, that’s the attitude you need to have,” she said. She gave his arm a last reassuring pat. “I need to head out, dear, but I’m here every Sunday and Wednesday for Mass.”
He nodded, eyes still focused on some unseen distance. Stepping back from her car and shoving his hands in his pockets, he even thanked her for her advice. So polite, Lydia mused as she started her noisy old car. She leaned out her window to offer him parting luck.
“I hope you figure out what you’re looking for, Eddie,” she yelled over the sound of her old engine. “And if you know what you want, I hope you find the courage to take it.”
Eddie lifted his head, grinning at her as she readied to pull away. His teeth looked awfully sharp, Lydia thought. There was an odd shadow around his clothes, a black shading that made him look bigger than he was.
“Don’t worry,” he called after her. “I plan on it.”