Fic: The closest thing to a perfect man (Venom, Symbrock, PG-13)
I originally thought this would be my last entry in the 
symbrock fest I've been taking part in, but I've just announced an Amnesty period for any last posts, so there may still be one or two more. We'll see. ;)
Title: The closest thing to a perfect man (is made of gingerbread), by
cupidsbow
Fandom: Venom
Pairing: Eddie Brock & Venom
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1500 words
Warnings: None.
Note: For Kotaboda in the Symbrock Holiday Gift Exchange 2018. For the prompt: "Venom and Eddie make a gingerbread house!!! It gets very messy but Eddie is very encouraging and Venom is blissfully unaware of how awful it looks."
Summary: Christmas has never been tastier.
Below the cut, or on AO3.
At first, Venom isn’t very impressed by the approach of Christmas. Eddie explains that it’s a celebration of the birth of a Human deity, and it mostly seems to involve decorative strands of shiny material being draped in improbable places and people bursting into song in public, neither of which are as impressive as the post-Halloween chocolate sales or the mashed potatoes of Thanksgiving.
But then, as they walk past the window of one of the fancy department stores Eddie never goes into, there’s the most outstanding thing they have ever seen!
Eddie! Look! Houses made of food!
Eddie stops walking, and lets them take a closer look at the display. “They’re gingerbread houses,” he explains. “People make them to celebrate Christmas.”
The biggest house is covered with every kind of candy, including some that they have never seen before but that look delicious. Its surrounded by a landscape of smaller candy cottages, marshmallow snow, and trees made out of stacked Hershey’s Kisses. They can smell the sugar even through the glass, and they want to eat everything, especially the trees made of Kisses. Inside the food houses are little food people, some of them stringing up tinsel, or putting chocolate parcels under spun-sugar trees, and some with their little mouths open in silent songs.
That’s when Venom truly starts to understand the wonder of Christmas. It’s like Humans can’t conceive of food ever running out, and use it in the most extravagant ways imaginable. It is a wonderland beyond their wildest imaginings, and a holiday that celebrates such excess is the most wondrous thing they have ever seen. Can we buy it?
“Uh,” Eddie says, which they already know means, No, we can’t afford it.
Disappointment cuts through them like hunger pangs, and they are about to decide they hate Christmas, but then Eddie surprises them. “You can’t really buy window displays, but we’re meant to make our own gingerbread house anyway. It’s more fun. We can do that instead.”
Yes!
It turns out that Eddie has never actually made a gingerbread house before. When they get home he tells them, “It’ll be nice to have a Christmas tradition we both do together for the first time,” as he Googles how to make one. However Google lets them down. Eddie is only half-way through scanning the first recipe and already at step twenty-seven. It says things like, “Process dry ingredients in your food processor until they resemble breadcrumbs,” which is a problem as it requires a food processor, which they don’t have, and dry ingredients, some of which Eddie has never heard of before. “What the hell is bicarbonate of soda? ”
The next recipe is even longer, and requires a template for cutting out shapes in the cookie dough. They don't have a template either. “Uh, Vee, I don’t think…”
You promised! they pout. You said we’d make a tradition together!
“Right. I did.” Eddie decisively closes all the tabs and stands up. “Let’s just skip the cooking part, and do the fun bit.”
Sometimes Eddie is a genius.
At the shop, Eddie puts a chocolate cake in their basket, and a tub of something called Royal Icing, and then takes them to the candy aisle. He waves at the selection and says, “Pick whatever you want, buddy.”
Venom is in the most delicious agony. How to choose? So many options!
Anything?
Eddie chuckles and picks up a giant package of M&M’s. “How about these?”
Yes! And then it’s easy. They pick KitKats, and Twix, and Kisses, and Mr Goodbar, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and chocolate-coated peanuts, and chocolate-covered potato chips. They drop them into the basket in handfuls until there’s no more room, and then look at Eddie, expecting him to put some of it back.
But Eddie just says, “Good job,” and goes to the checkout.
When they get home again, Eddie dumps the bags on the table, and pulls out their one big cutting board and the bread knife. He takes the chocolate cake out of the packaging, and sizes it up. He cuts it in half, and then turns one of the halves into a triangle shape. He puts the triangle on top of the other half, and the cake suddenly looks like a crude house with a roof.
Eddie, they say admiringly. You made a house out of cake!
Eddie offers them some of the leftover cake, which is moist and dense and very chocolatey. “It’s a dirty job, but I think we can handle it.”
Next he opens the Royal Icing. “This stuff should work like glue,” he says, and spreads some on the cake with a butter knife to stick the two pieces together. It's white and thick and smells of sugar. “What do you want to glue on next?”
Venom thinks back to the gingerbread house in the display window, and its candy roof-tiles. M&Ms for the roof.
“Okay.” Eddie slathers the top of the house in icing, and hands over the bag of M&Ms.
The first few go on easily, but then they realise they’ve put five red ones in a row. They take two back off, but they’re covered in icing so they have to eat them.
After some thought, Venom takes a third red M&M back off and offers it to Eddie. Eddie is busy cutting a round bit out of the cake so they can put in a Reece’s Cup for the door. He opens his mouth instead of taking the candy, and they pop their tentacle inside.
“Mmmm,” he says, as he sucks all the icing off their tentacle.
They retract it slowly, enjoying the way it tingles where Eddie’s tongue touched them.
It takes a while to finish the roof, but they both admire it once it's done. The lines of M&Ms are a little crooked, and in a couple of places they pushed a bit hard and the candies sank into the cake, but it’s colourful and they did enough taste-testing to know it’s delicious.
“Very festive!” Eddie says.
Eddie had stuck a chocolate-covered peanut on the Reece’s Cup for a doorknob, and then wedged the whole thing into the circle he'd cut out of the cake. It needed a lot of icing to stick, and it's a bit lopsided, but Venom thinks it looks good. Your door looks tasty, they offer.
“Thanks, Vee. What next?”
They consider. Twix and KitKats for the walls?
“Good thinking. And I’m gonna make a bit of a garden with these chips and peanuts.”
Eddie slathers more icing onto one of the house’s sides, and leaves them to stick on whatever combination of candy they please.
It turns out to be hard to break the KitKats with tentacles, so they have to eat a few that end up in weird shapes. They share with Eddie, who continues to be very particular about making sure he sucks off all the icing and chocolate before letting go of their tentacle.
When they finish the sides and rear of the house, they stand back and admire what they’ve made. The Twix and KitKat walls make it look a bit like a log cabin, the uneven bits just making it look more rustic and rough-hewn, and the dribbles of crumb-studded royal icing that show through here and there look a bit like dirty snow. It has a peanut path wobbling up to the round front door, with crushed chips on either side as fake dirt. There’s a slight tilt to the roof where the icing sticking it to the house slipped a bit, but it’s capped off with the jaunty M&M tiles which adds a final festive touch. It looks completely different from any other house Venom has ever seen.
"Hmmm. I think it needs one more thing," Eddie says. He takes the Mr Goodbar and thwacks it against the table several times, breaking the chocolate into shards. Then he spreads the glue onto the front of the house, all around the door, and starts creating a mosaic of chocolate shards around it.
When he's finished there are a few gaps, so Venom pokes in some M&Ms to cover them up. Outstanding!
“We're a pretty great team,” Eddie agrees, wrapping an arm around them. “But you know what I think it still needs?”
Tasting?
Eddie holds out a lopsided tree made of Hershey’s Kisses. “That works too. But I was gonna go with Kisses. ”
I love kisses, Venom declares, and launches himself at Eddie’s laughing mouth.
"I know you do, love," Eddie confesses, in between kissing them back.
Later, after the phenethylamine high of sex has worn off, they feed each other chunks of cake, not bothering with spoons. There are so many flavours and textures of chocolate all jumbled together, and it’s the best cake they’ve ever eaten.
Venom decides, I like our new Christmas tradition, Eddie.
“It’s the best,” Eddie agrees, and goes back to licking their tentacles clean of chocolate, making them tingle everywhere he touches..
This entry was originally posted at https://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/435432.html.
symbrock fest I've been taking part in, but I've just announced an Amnesty period for any last posts, so there may still be one or two more. We'll see. ;)
Title: The closest thing to a perfect man (is made of gingerbread), by
cupidsbow
Fandom: Venom
Pairing: Eddie Brock & Venom
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1500 words
Warnings: None.
Note: For Kotaboda in the Symbrock Holiday Gift Exchange 2018. For the prompt: "Venom and Eddie make a gingerbread house!!! It gets very messy but Eddie is very encouraging and Venom is blissfully unaware of how awful it looks."
Summary: Christmas has never been tastier.
Below the cut, or on AO3.
At first, Venom isn’t very impressed by the approach of Christmas. Eddie explains that it’s a celebration of the birth of a Human deity, and it mostly seems to involve decorative strands of shiny material being draped in improbable places and people bursting into song in public, neither of which are as impressive as the post-Halloween chocolate sales or the mashed potatoes of Thanksgiving.
But then, as they walk past the window of one of the fancy department stores Eddie never goes into, there’s the most outstanding thing they have ever seen!
Eddie! Look! Houses made of food!
Eddie stops walking, and lets them take a closer look at the display. “They’re gingerbread houses,” he explains. “People make them to celebrate Christmas.”
The biggest house is covered with every kind of candy, including some that they have never seen before but that look delicious. Its surrounded by a landscape of smaller candy cottages, marshmallow snow, and trees made out of stacked Hershey’s Kisses. They can smell the sugar even through the glass, and they want to eat everything, especially the trees made of Kisses. Inside the food houses are little food people, some of them stringing up tinsel, or putting chocolate parcels under spun-sugar trees, and some with their little mouths open in silent songs.
That’s when Venom truly starts to understand the wonder of Christmas. It’s like Humans can’t conceive of food ever running out, and use it in the most extravagant ways imaginable. It is a wonderland beyond their wildest imaginings, and a holiday that celebrates such excess is the most wondrous thing they have ever seen. Can we buy it?
“Uh,” Eddie says, which they already know means, No, we can’t afford it.
Disappointment cuts through them like hunger pangs, and they are about to decide they hate Christmas, but then Eddie surprises them. “You can’t really buy window displays, but we’re meant to make our own gingerbread house anyway. It’s more fun. We can do that instead.”
Yes!
It turns out that Eddie has never actually made a gingerbread house before. When they get home he tells them, “It’ll be nice to have a Christmas tradition we both do together for the first time,” as he Googles how to make one. However Google lets them down. Eddie is only half-way through scanning the first recipe and already at step twenty-seven. It says things like, “Process dry ingredients in your food processor until they resemble breadcrumbs,” which is a problem as it requires a food processor, which they don’t have, and dry ingredients, some of which Eddie has never heard of before. “What the hell is bicarbonate of soda? ”
The next recipe is even longer, and requires a template for cutting out shapes in the cookie dough. They don't have a template either. “Uh, Vee, I don’t think…”
You promised! they pout. You said we’d make a tradition together!
“Right. I did.” Eddie decisively closes all the tabs and stands up. “Let’s just skip the cooking part, and do the fun bit.”
Sometimes Eddie is a genius.
At the shop, Eddie puts a chocolate cake in their basket, and a tub of something called Royal Icing, and then takes them to the candy aisle. He waves at the selection and says, “Pick whatever you want, buddy.”
Venom is in the most delicious agony. How to choose? So many options!
Anything?
Eddie chuckles and picks up a giant package of M&M’s. “How about these?”
Yes! And then it’s easy. They pick KitKats, and Twix, and Kisses, and Mr Goodbar, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and chocolate-coated peanuts, and chocolate-covered potato chips. They drop them into the basket in handfuls until there’s no more room, and then look at Eddie, expecting him to put some of it back.
But Eddie just says, “Good job,” and goes to the checkout.
When they get home again, Eddie dumps the bags on the table, and pulls out their one big cutting board and the bread knife. He takes the chocolate cake out of the packaging, and sizes it up. He cuts it in half, and then turns one of the halves into a triangle shape. He puts the triangle on top of the other half, and the cake suddenly looks like a crude house with a roof.
Eddie, they say admiringly. You made a house out of cake!
Eddie offers them some of the leftover cake, which is moist and dense and very chocolatey. “It’s a dirty job, but I think we can handle it.”
Next he opens the Royal Icing. “This stuff should work like glue,” he says, and spreads some on the cake with a butter knife to stick the two pieces together. It's white and thick and smells of sugar. “What do you want to glue on next?”
Venom thinks back to the gingerbread house in the display window, and its candy roof-tiles. M&Ms for the roof.
“Okay.” Eddie slathers the top of the house in icing, and hands over the bag of M&Ms.
The first few go on easily, but then they realise they’ve put five red ones in a row. They take two back off, but they’re covered in icing so they have to eat them.
After some thought, Venom takes a third red M&M back off and offers it to Eddie. Eddie is busy cutting a round bit out of the cake so they can put in a Reece’s Cup for the door. He opens his mouth instead of taking the candy, and they pop their tentacle inside.
“Mmmm,” he says, as he sucks all the icing off their tentacle.
They retract it slowly, enjoying the way it tingles where Eddie’s tongue touched them.
It takes a while to finish the roof, but they both admire it once it's done. The lines of M&Ms are a little crooked, and in a couple of places they pushed a bit hard and the candies sank into the cake, but it’s colourful and they did enough taste-testing to know it’s delicious.
“Very festive!” Eddie says.
Eddie had stuck a chocolate-covered peanut on the Reece’s Cup for a doorknob, and then wedged the whole thing into the circle he'd cut out of the cake. It needed a lot of icing to stick, and it's a bit lopsided, but Venom thinks it looks good. Your door looks tasty, they offer.
“Thanks, Vee. What next?”
They consider. Twix and KitKats for the walls?
“Good thinking. And I’m gonna make a bit of a garden with these chips and peanuts.”
Eddie slathers more icing onto one of the house’s sides, and leaves them to stick on whatever combination of candy they please.
It turns out to be hard to break the KitKats with tentacles, so they have to eat a few that end up in weird shapes. They share with Eddie, who continues to be very particular about making sure he sucks off all the icing and chocolate before letting go of their tentacle.
When they finish the sides and rear of the house, they stand back and admire what they’ve made. The Twix and KitKat walls make it look a bit like a log cabin, the uneven bits just making it look more rustic and rough-hewn, and the dribbles of crumb-studded royal icing that show through here and there look a bit like dirty snow. It has a peanut path wobbling up to the round front door, with crushed chips on either side as fake dirt. There’s a slight tilt to the roof where the icing sticking it to the house slipped a bit, but it’s capped off with the jaunty M&M tiles which adds a final festive touch. It looks completely different from any other house Venom has ever seen.
"Hmmm. I think it needs one more thing," Eddie says. He takes the Mr Goodbar and thwacks it against the table several times, breaking the chocolate into shards. Then he spreads the glue onto the front of the house, all around the door, and starts creating a mosaic of chocolate shards around it.
When he's finished there are a few gaps, so Venom pokes in some M&Ms to cover them up. Outstanding!
“We're a pretty great team,” Eddie agrees, wrapping an arm around them. “But you know what I think it still needs?”
Tasting?
Eddie holds out a lopsided tree made of Hershey’s Kisses. “That works too. But I was gonna go with Kisses. ”
I love kisses, Venom declares, and launches himself at Eddie’s laughing mouth.
"I know you do, love," Eddie confesses, in between kissing them back.
Later, after the phenethylamine high of sex has worn off, they feed each other chunks of cake, not bothering with spoons. There are so many flavours and textures of chocolate all jumbled together, and it’s the best cake they’ve ever eaten.
Venom decides, I like our new Christmas tradition, Eddie.
“It’s the best,” Eddie agrees, and goes back to licking their tentacles clean of chocolate, making them tingle everywhere he touches..
This entry was originally posted at https://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/435432.html.