#that is fueled not by spite over the banquet but because they never wanted to join in the first place

[impossible-rat-babies]

rotating in my head the way the bureaucracy of the twin adders hates eyrie for weird legal situations

[mlmdarkfiction]

I wrote this for @bloodybrahms because I’m fueled entirely by spite and my love for BB

Fandom: Re-Animator

Pairing: Herbert West x Reader

Content Warnings: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha Herbert, Omega Reader, Safe For Work

Read Below: 

“Come here,” You pull your mate off to the side of the entrance, looking him over once more. Herbert’s unhappy, it’s clear to see, he hates wearing the suit. He’s only doing this, only coming to this even at all because it means getting donors for his research.

That’s also why you’re here.

Donations require a level of schmoozing with rich investors that  your dear temperamental alpha isn’t capable of.

“What is it now?” You’d only spent the whole ride here reminding him to be on his best behavior. And really he only hates it because he knows you’re right, and that he has to follow your guidance in this one area.

Even after all this time he still blushes when you line in close, fixing his hair so that it lays perfectly in place, and then going to fix his tie as well.

“There. Now you’re perfect.” A simple kiss is placed on his cheek.

Herbert pretends to be offended, attempting to wipe his cheek clean, but only because the two of you are in public. In private, although he’d deny it, Herbert is far more receptive of your affections.

“Well...let’s get this over with.”

His arm finds itself around you, hand resting just above your hip. He knows the drill, he knows once you enter the reception hall you’ll be off mingling with Alpha, Beta, Omega, alike just like a true socialite, and he’ll be left to drink alone in the corner.

It was part of what made the two of you a perfect pair. You had the beauty and social skills he lacked and he had...enough smarts to provide for you both.

At least that’s all he really sees himself adding to the relationship.

Of course, Doctor Herbert West would never admit to being jealous, but sometimes when he sees the way you look interacting with other Alpha’s, with stronger, more conventionally attractive Alpha’s, he wonders what it is you see in someone like him.

Still it’s not a thought he’s ever actually felt the need to inform you of. After all, for every insecurity he seems to have, you manage to reassure him without even being aware.

He follows their set protocol to the tee though, remaining back towards the drinks and snacks, keeping himself busy simply watching you.

At least he was until he notices you quickly becoming uncomfortable in conversation. He picks up on the way your eyes search for him in the crowded banquet hall, and he notes how relieved you look when his eyes meet your own.

It only takes a few long strides before he’s at your side, arms wrapping around you, lips close to your neck. He’s marking his territory, eyes staring down the other alpha with a scary intensity.

“I see you’ve met my Mate?” The shock on the other Alpha’s face is enough to make Herbert smirk, you feel the ghost of his lips against the skin of your neck.

“I see, I didn’t know they-” They cut themself off with a quick clearing of the throat.

“My apologies.”

As soon as the strange Alpha leaves, you find yourself leaning into Herbert, and he allows you to do so, despite the public setting.

Yes, Herbert thinks, There may be other Alpha’s out there, but he is your Alpha, and you make it more than clear you want no other.

[walriding]

     Do not worship the swarm, nor allow the delusions of the patients to influence your beliefs. Any sentient being based in this technology will be so far superior to us that illusions of godliness will be reasonable.               

                                We have always looked into chaos and called it God.                              We now are blessed with sufficient power that such belief could destroy us.                                                            Do not be tempted.  

     Miles Upshur has never really been the religious type. There were the obligatory church visits as a child, naturally, a cultural and spiritual necessity in the eyes of his parents. By the time he was older (and a touch more cynical), he decided the idea of worshiping an invisible entity who was supposedly content to allow humanity to continually fuck itself over just wasn’t for him. If God was real, then he was a much bigger asshole than any pious individual was willing to give Him credit for.

     Thus, the ancillary trappings of his faith -- a belief in angels and demons and spirits -- fell similarly by the wayside. They were good for stories, great for drunken conspiracy theorizing, and fuck, maybe there was something to be said for the supernatural, but such concepts were nothing more than vague notions in the back of his mind.

     He’s recently been forced to reconsider his stance.

     Since the beginning, Wernicke was loathe to attribute the Walrider’s existence to anything other than the brilliance of mankind. The deification of it was a product of weak-minded delusion and nothing more, of that he was adamantly certain. It was science, mathematics, the result of complex equations and careful calculations. You started with madness, multiplied it exponentially through the Morphogenic Engine, and were left with unimaginable power. And the technology, that was the key. A meticulously curated film splattered with blood and Rorschach ink, an injection of nanomachines designed to co-opt the natural processes of the human body, lines of coded 1′s and 0′s to orchestrate it all. Fluids, wires, electricity, like a modern mockery of Victor Frankenstein’s laboratory. And was the end result not the same?

     Man makes a monster.

     Such is the punishment for attempting to play god; you get more than you possibly could have bargained for.

     But machines do not feel. They do not hunger. They do not crave. They are fueled by lines of 1′s and 0′s and wires and electricity -- not nightmares. 

     Wernicke’s complex equations and careful calculations were missing something.

     Something he was far too blind to willingly see.

    "The doctor told me once that if you showed a caveman our technology, he would think it was magic. And if you showed a modern man magic, he would think it's technology." In this assumption, Wernicke was not incorrect. The tables have turned. The tides, reversed. Humans cling to logic, now, the great destroyer of all uncertainty. No longer are simple tricks of the light misattributed to spirits. No longer are fingers pointed at ghouls or goblins or ghosts as the root of a problem. We’ve outgrown such childish beliefs.

    But things have a funny way of existing whether people believe in them or not.

     There have always been stories regarding the things that go bump in the night. It’s human nature to explain that which cannot be understood, to try to make sense of a sometimes nonsensical world. Good things, beautiful things -- those are the work of loving and benevolent gods. Bad things, ugly twisted horrible things -- those come from a different place entirely. A child is born lifeless; surely it is the work of dark entities. A child disappears without a trace; it was the shadows that claimed him. A sleeper wakes but is immobile, the corners of the room leering at him like towering figures; a monster planted itself upon his chest to claim the nightmares in his skull. These myths pervade across countries and cultures, variations on a unifying theme.

     It comes at night, baited by your breath or your dreams or your soul, and it comes to feed.

     It’s had a variety of names over the centuries. Perstanta in Catalan. Ammuttadori in Italian. Alp in German. The legends have typified it with mixed success, for the creature does not create nightmares so much as it exacerbates them, digging into the darkest corners of your subconscious and wallowing in it, splashing flecks of repressed pain and torment like an animal churning up mud. 

     Experiment: you take men with fractured minds and you finish shattering the pieces. You connect them to a thrumming machine, their thoughts in splinters and their blood heavy with nanites, and you wait for a breakthrough.

     Hypothesis: if the ruined bodies accept the nanites, they will manufacture something extraordinary. 

     Results: a nightmare.

     Conclusion: you have baited something demonic. 

     The stories had to come from somewhere.

     Wernicke and Murkoff did create something incredible, pioneering the field of nanotechnology in a way no one else had been able to accomplish. That the human body could be manipulated to perpetuate a population of nanites was miraculous in and of itself. Maybe that was their error -- twisting biology too far. Or maybe they knew they were crossing the line and simply didn’t care. 

     Or maybe they never saw the line at all.

     How often we turn a blind eye to that which we do not want to see. 

     (The scales on Saul’s eyes were fear, and when you see beyond it, you truly see.)

     The body of the beast was manmade, a synthetic nanite swarm to grant its wielder terrifying strength. Yet the brain, the soul of the best was not produced: it was summoned. Called in the most ancient of ways, beckoned by the promise of prey. The Engine therapy chummed the waters and set a banquet for a shark, and Murkoff couldn’t weave a net large or strong enough to contain it. Their safety measures were useless, for once the unholy terror they’d bred and groomed attached itself to the vessel they hollowed out, there was nothing to stop it. It fed on Billy’s rage and anger and pain just as it feasted on nightmares in days of old, only now... now Murkoff had given it a body. It bent all too willingly to the boy’s will, to his thirst for vengeance and hunger for retribution. He couldn’t control it -- no one so fragmented ever could. For that was the corporation’s fatal mistake. They crippled a mouse and gave it to a serpent, and the serpent ate the offering but was not truly satisfied. Without the thrill of the hunt, the meal sat hollow in the serpent’s belly until it was all but burned up, and it tore through everything in sight but could not find the morsel it needed, the one that would satiate it for the rest of its existence.

     A new creature appeared in the serpent’s domain. Foolishly brave, fighting on in spite of damage that would have wrecked the average being, it clawed its way to the heart of the serpent’s territory with no weapon, no defense aside from its willpower. And that creature sliced the mouse from the serpent’s belly and eliminated it, and in its famished desperation, the serpent knew that this meal would carry it indefinitely. 

     And so Miles Upshur was consumed.

     Though perhaps consumption is a misnomer. Parasite though it may be, the Walrider cannot perpetuate itself without the body and mind of its Host. Miles’ cells keep the nanites flowing, and the memories in his brain keep the demon fed. The Swarm needs both to exist as it currently does -- not as a formless shadow, but as a tangible entity with the ability to damage in ways it was previously incapable of. It will exist without a Host as it did for centuries before Murkoff decided to kick a hornet’s nest, but it’s had a taste of true power, now. Why relegate yourself to a life of myth when there are better options? Besides, Miles needs it just as badly -- without the Walrider his heart will cease to beat.

     Thus, man and machine and myth tangle in an endless circle, a flowing ouroboros with no beginning and no end. Around and around the serpent trails, fangs latched in its own tail. If it eats too little of itself the cycle is broken. If it eats too much in a fit of greed, there will be nothing of it left.

     And so Miles Upshur must live because he is needed, still, and will be needed until a Host more ideal walks this Earth.

    (This is the gift of the Walrider.)