Work Text:
If time is a river, then it must flow. Through caverns measureless to man, in tribute and in confluence, down to a sunless sea. And from this river springs civilization, as in the bygone empires of carbon. But it’s a leaky system. Someone has to recover all the water leached to soil. All those moments lost in time.
If you were born with a silicon spoon in your mouth, you’d be the king of this cycle. All the time in the universe, yours to recharge and store. Just another commodity controlled by a select few.
If you were criminally talented (and artificially enhanced), you could steal. A few seconds here, several minutes there. The time that would otherwise go to waste.
Somewhere along the endless stream of space junk and at the intersection of four winds is an undeclared pitstop. At that undeclared pitstop is sometimes* a bar. At this bar they’ll serve you sparkling water if you ask for water, mineral water in a glass bottle if you specify “still water”, and tap water with ice (hold the glass) and a permaban if you were so rude as to threaten to “dig out [the bartender’s] goddamn chip with a fork.”
*The bar exhibits wave-like behavior and its exact location at any given time cannot be predicted. If you really must be there, you’d best get an invitation.
For the junction named OOBAR was once, and could still be, named FOOBAR. In hot pink neon letters blazing with collective nostalgia for noble gas discharge technology. When the “F” burned out, no one cared to fix it. Everyone liked the sign better without.
The current bartender has two eyes of indeterminate color and messy werewolf-brown hair and is dressed in the same washed-soft henley and jeans that he arrived in. He’s there because he’s there. The bartender never leaves. Their identity changes, but they never leave. There must always be a bartender.
"Audit. Bottom of the basket. Water. Diana," He relays to the customer. “That message mean anything to you?”
Sanjay repeats the message thoughtfully before answering, “Nope. Thanks, EB.”
“Sure,” nods Eddie Brock.
For nothing in life is certain except taxes and spam. Death is optional, if you have the right connections. Until the heat death of the universe, anyway.
The kid takes his drink from the counter and carries it to the table he’s staked out with a couple of friends.
A new wave of patrons hits the bar. Eddie can tell the people are from Planet Nine because they all clamor at him for absinthe, the “real kind.”
And Brock said, Let there be absinthe: and there was absinthe.
Bar’s slow now.
The walls continue to dance in synchrony to the bar playlist—currently on the song ‘Karma Chameleon.’ Sheets of powder-blue and sheets of violet, and indigo where they overlap. Run up and down with little ladder rungs that drift in pseudorandom patterns.
Eddie starts wiping down the bar counter. Mazy motions around and around silver-webbed black granite. To no end. The counter will reset itself soon. Still, there’s comfort in repetition.
The next patron walks in alone but not by himself. His dark hair has grown out to its inevitable evolution: a dual state of ponytail and knot, escaped ends curling about. His big brown eyes scan the room, calculating.
He claims a stool at the bar. Pulls down his black fabric face mask and tucks it under his clean-shaven chin. Waiting there, he fiddles with one of the rings on his right hand. He wears a lot of rings these days. As many as Saturn used to have.
If Eddie were to check his ID, it might say: Khan. Or Desdenova. Or Dev Shibboleth, or whatever alias he’s going by these days.
Eddie finishes his counter-wiping ritual, unhurried. Only then does he address the customer: “How can you stand it? You could literally ride anything else. May I suggest a banana slug?”
Carlton Drake tuts. “Already chatting shit,” he begins, when his eyes flare with pale fire. A deeper, stranger voice continues: “I do like banana slugs.” Riot grins, white teeth and wry lips. “Eddie baby.”
“Bambi.” He kisses the air at Riot. “You can stay.”
Eddie turns around and picks up the blender jug for cleaning.
If you’re not going to at least be civil to Carlton today, begins Venom.
Eddie replies: You’re gonna retrieve a picture of his face and shrink it super super small and print it to the upper left hand corner of my vision so that even when he’s not around he’s around, yeah yeah. So do it already, hmm?
Venom makes a disgruntled noise and falls quiet. That’s the thing about sharing a mind with a computerized alien. No successful bluffs. No secrets.
The shimmering suggestion of a tendril unfurls from Eddie’s shoulder. Nearly invisible, no more than a line of diamond dust. Venom undulates toward Riot and touches their face; Riot, in their moment of blissed weakness, drops control.
Smiling softly, Carlton plays with the tendril in return. Twirls it around his hand like it’s a lock of hair. (Eddie’s hand spasms.) Riot prints themself out as a ripple of hot air, their signature blinking lights left uninduced. They loop once around Carlton’s neck and then flow out like melted solder to greet Venom.
The blender needed only a rinse, but Eddie adds some dish soap and fills it halfway with water and pulses it repeatedly at max speed. Nice ambient chainsaw. He stops when the next song comes on—another prom song from the 1980s, which means Venom picked it.
When Eddie turns back around, Venom has retreated and Drake’s projecting a careful expression of indifference. He’s softly backlit by indigo light. The right side of his face and shoulders are outlined in hot pink castoff from the neon sign. The glow’s pooled in his eyes, too, but Eddie wouldn’t know. He’s not looking.
“Water.” Carlton taps the counter with two fingers.
“Uh huh,” says Eddie over the cheery, drum-and-synth intro of ‘Take on Me.’
Eddie Brock knows what water is. He’s a Pisces. But, suppose he...
...sort of didn’t know and was, like, an Aries…?
“This is sparkling water,” Carlton says flatly. His odd accent is more East London than ever, what with all the time he’s spending in that British off-world colony. Each hybrid syllable ghosting the cadence of ‘Rule Britannia.’
Eddie scratches at his facial hair. “Shoulda specified.”
Carlton takes a few contrarian sips and then pushes the glass away.
*Da-dink dink* chimes something in the room. Inaudible to most everyone in the bar, by virtue of the loud music playing.
Eddie takes his phone out and checks the notification.
Carlton recoils like a vampire presented with a crucifix. “You still have a phone?" He watches with distaste as Eddie pokes at the physical, glass screen.
Eddie’s not great about returning his mission bricks to the vault. It’s too easy to space out and go around with two or three phones left in various pockets. His collection’s getting a little out of hand—at this point, it’s a compulsion. Eddie Brock is a simple person: Eddie Brock lands in a cell phone era; Eddie Brock takes a souvenir.
He answers Carlton distractedly: “It’s called nostalgia, huh? ‘Sides, some of us actually bother to blend in where we go.”
Upon Eddie’s words, Carlton vaguely, vaguely remembers that this isn’t the first time he’s caught Eddie with a phone. Good. Riot’s always optimizing Carlton’s memory storage and doing system cleanups. The fact that this particular Eddie-memory was so weak and slow to call means that Riot didn’t care for it either.
If anyone were to ask Eddie why he’s not chipped, he’d cite something of separation of church and state. (See, no one needs to know about his alien situation.) As for Drake, he chipped himself just to chip himself. Because it was new, and because he’s an adult hypebeast in denial. (Let it be noted, though, that he removed the chip himself shortly thereafter. Riot hated it, and so did he.) Neither Carlton nor Eddie need a chip. Riot and Venom are their phones and their everything.
/*
Today is another day to find you,
Shying away.
I’ll be—
*/
Carlton cuts in right on time to prevent the chorus. “Would someone please change the music?” he snaps.
The dusty, candy-colored jukebox in the corner lights up, rainbows beaming to life. Riot plays the first nine seconds of ‘I Cum Blood’ at max volume.
No one reacts except for the beige-suited old man who’s been dozing off by the jukebox. He jolts awake, knocking askance his maroon-tinted glasses.
Venom overrides Riot’s Cannibal Corpse selection with some slow synth noodling.
/*
Let's dance in style, let’s dance for a while.
Heaven can wait, we're only watching the skies.
Hoping for the best but expecting the worst.
Are you going to drop the bomb or not?
*/
“Maraschino?” Eddie slides the opened jar across the counter.
Carlton crinkles his nose. Riot smirks, eyes glittering. They pluck out one chemical-soaked cherry and, with all the divine right of a king, bite off the fruit and discard the stem. They eat several more cherries thus in luxury. Stems lined up in a row on the counter.
“C’mere,” they tell Eddie.
Forearms braced, Eddie leans across the counter. Not too far. Some boundaries cannot be crossed.
Two syruped fingers in offering. Riot pushes them past Eddie’s lips for a plush mouth to receive. At the mingled taste they sigh. The resistance within Riot fading to its principled baseline. Eddie’s eyes go glacier blue, and Venom gives thanks. This pleases Riot. Tongue darting from canine to canine. Red and white like phosphorus. They withdraw their fingers slowly and smear them down Eddie’s bearded chin. Sticky.
The moment snaps like a thread.
Carlton pulls back, sullen.
Venom fizzes inside of Eddie. They were both ruined a long time ago. “You got somethin’,” he tells Carlton, pointing at his own cheek, “right here.”
“I do not.”
“Yeah, you do. It’s a stuck pixel.” Eddie reaches for Carlton’s cheek without thinking.
Carlton lashes out, python-fast. His hand clamps around Eddie’s.
Eddie’s thoughts crystallize around a seed of justification. He puts on a rakish grin. Regards from Los Angeles. 2019 and 2038, he thinks at Carlton through Venom.
The shared traumatic memory passes between them and further constricts Carlton’s grip. Eddie can’t return the pressure because he’s caught in Carlton’s left hand. Kind of unfair.
That was YOUR fault—both times, Carlton sends back. It was Silver Lake. What did you think would happen in SILVER LAKE?
Fine. We were both set on fire—‘cept, you’re the only one with a complex about it. It’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy, heard of it?
Being kind of legendary has its downsides. Some people react violently to the idea of a superpowered muscle beast (or beasts?) hitching around on stolen time and eating guys it’s judged to be eatable.
Carlton’s grip turns vindictive. Overkill.
Squeeze a little harder and you win, comments Riot with an ambiguous level of sarcasm.
Eddie’s hand goes numb.
The air between them is dry enough to carry a spark. Like the Santa Ana winds have blown into the bar.
Something within Eddie sublimes. He grabs the sparkling water and throws it at Drake’s face. Static for static. Ha. Process that unexpected stimulus.
Except.
There’s no rendering, no delay at all. Water runs down his face in fizzy rivulets too perfect for simulation.
An uproar of laughter unrelated from one of the tables.
Eddie sets the glass down. It wasn’t a pixel. A new freckle, maybe. Eddie can see that now, the skin pigment refracted in beads of water. That, and the droplets caught in Carlton’s long black eyelashes.
“You…” Carlton releases Eddie and wipes at his face with the sleeve of his synthetic leather jacket. It doesn’t help much.
Eddie wavers. Blood superheating at mere associations. Numbly, he gives Carlton the tea towel. “It’s clean,” he mutters.
Drake didn’t cast here.
He’s here here, which
—that fresh-kill endorphin cascade; a fountain of chains unwound; hot-blooded pulses linked in synthesis—
usually
—gunpowder and sugar-char dripping from sharp mouths; hands and claws tangled in fast, thick hair; breathing skin and raspy cries—
means
—levitating in air, synapses aflame in recursion; living ropes interlaced so that no one knew where anyone began or ended; until death shudders in reverse—
business.
Carlton dries his face with the tea towel. Dampened strands of hair sticking to skin. When he’s satisfied, he folds the towel into a tiny neat square and sets it on the counter.
Eddie picks up the square, shakes it out more than necessary and slings it back over his shoulder.
They look.
Eyes ticking to his in kept time, Carlton considers Eddie. His strands of untamed hair in the neon light. His ears in a radioactive pink glow, patterns of delicate veins revealed. Steelblue irises cast to magenta. An impish, impudent mouth. The form of his changing shoulders, cut into shadow.
Carlton speaks first, voice subtly roughened. “Don’t get it twisted. I”—(and Eddie mouths along to the next words)—“just happened to be in town. I got a job for you. God I hate when you do that.”
“Aww, ya thought of me.” Eddie smiles into Venom. “What’s the job?”
“Wakefield, Jared. He was running a child trafficking ring out of New Hanoi. Until he fucked up and had to go on the run. He fucked up the run, too. Got stranded in Saint Cloud, Minnesota.”
“When?”
“First of January, 1970. Midnight. He got epoched.”
The man’s blunder defaulted him to the first syllable of recorded time. It’s not a mistake that Venom or Riot would have ever made.
Eddie replies, “Good. I’d kill for some cosmic brownies.” Mmm yes. Delicious fudgey squares of processed carbohydrates… and those crunchy sprinkles!
Riot blinks. “You have the file now.”
Eddie’s phone and Venom buzz. They have the file now.
Beneath the counter, Eddie’s hand closes around the bartender’s fruit knife.
Carlton shifts, about to get up.
Eddie strikes.
The knife phases into the counter, blade wobbling in a predictable pattern.
Carlton glares at the knife he’s dodged and sniffs, “You will never make me bartender.”
Worth a try, Eddie thinks as he withdraws the knife. He attempted it on Drake for the principle. No one can make Eddie Brock bartender, either. He’s bartender because he likes it and is good at it.
“Just gimme two seconds to get free,” Eddie tells him. He whistles with two fingers. “Hey! Sanjay!”
Sanjay looks up from his friends’ card game—he’d lost the current round and was sitting out. Dazed and spaced out, now spacing back in. He straightens his big, double-bridge, zero-prescription glasses.
His friends know what’s up.
He doesn’t.
Bleached-platinum hair flopping with his each step, Sanjay approaches the bar.
Eddie says: “Sorry, Sanj. I gotta jet.” And with that, he drives the fruit knife through Sanjay’s hand and into the fluid countertop.
Sanjay stares bleakly at the upright knife handle. “Aww. Again?”
Nice kid. Real cute. But not the sharpest bulb in the drawer, even though he was a CRISPR baby.
“You looked bored again. It’s kismet.”
Sanjay uproots the knife, and his hand fritzes over with intact brown skin.
Eddie drops the tea towel on the counter for the beleaguered boy. “That’s semi-clean. There’s more in the back.”
“Why,” Sanjay whispers, but he scruffs the tea towel and drapes it over his shoulder. Slowly and with gravitas, like Atlas and the heavens.
His image begins to flicker back and forth between his current location and his imperative.
“I’m going, I’m going,” Sanjay mutters. His first round of customers has already arrived. His friends join him at the bar and start talking all at once.
He and Eddie trade places, but not before Eddie grabs a handful of lemon wedges for the road. “Godspeed,” he bids Sanjay, who’s already struggling find the stock of towels.
Drake’s already stepped out. Probably vaping aggressively.
Where are we going again? Eddie wonders.
Minnesota. Perfect coat weather.
In an illegal operation, Eddie vaults the counter—fast enough that there’s no consequence to him. Dodging a half-hearted stabbing attempt by Sanjay, he grabs his Sherpa-lined denim jacket (nine years out of fashion and one year from coming back) and rolls out.
The outside air is toxic and benzaldehyde-sweet and tastes dusty-old, the way pre-2000s computers smell. Carlton’s in a cloud of vapor. Boots kicking ripples into an oily-sheened puddle. Eddie steps into the cloud. Something akin to shame gets Carlton to stow the vape pen away.
Sometimes you gotta shoot your shot, Riot tells Carlton, while Venom simultaneously feeds Eddie the same message.
Carlton speaks first: “Eddie.” Multiple questions stored in one word.
Quirking a smile, Eddie answers them all with: “Carlton.”
When he tries, as always, to tuck a stray tendril of hair behind Carlton’s ear, something else lets him get away with it.
"You, my brown-eyed girl. Do you remember when, we used to sing…" Eddie Brock knows less than half of the lyrics, which is enough and too much.
And when Carlton Drake shuts him up the soft way, they’ll call it a proof by contradiction.
And when their mutual surrender peaks in a long, hedonistic detour, they’ll name it conservation.
They’ve got time.
It’s only the past they’re chasing.
Some spirits passing through OOBAR will wonder about the lemon wedges scattered on the sidewalk and the lingering vapor-scent of raspberry rum.