Beware: The Chibis Have Taken Control!

((I can't believe that took me four comments to post. -.-;;;))

"...boatload of Old Ones on the way..."

Old Ones. Ones Ones coming here. Mr. Snow... coming here. The mere thought of their leader's name filled Hal's veins with ice, nearly started him shaking all the way down to his core. Fergus... Fergus would give Hal whatever he needed, whatever he wanted, would let him carry this little game of humanity as far as he dared take it because he would never question the social order between them -- Hal ruled; Fergus was ruled. But Mr. Snow... Mr. Snow had only ever had so much tolerance for Hal's attempts to recapture a simple human life, to bow out of the game for however long. He always found him, always dragged him back. And Hal always came, an obedient servant, because just like Fergus, he could no more refuse his master than he could stop the sun from rising and setting.

And Hal wasn't ready.

He wasn't ready to give this up. It was too new, too unexplored. He wanted more time. But, seeing that unadulterated panic once again rising in Hal's eyes and knowing even better than he did what he needed in that moment, Fergus continued talking with a wicked smirk on his lips, as if those last seven words hadn't meant a thing.

"...until then it's just me and this mouthy little dicksplash..."

Terrified eyes looking up at him with tears caught on clumped lashes. Howling grief at the realization that everything that had once tied him to a human life was dead, now, gone, irretrievable. Hal had known even then that this one was different. He would never be another Fergus -- no one would ever be another Fergus -- but he could be something else. Feeling his arousal spike at the pungent scent of fear in the air, Hal finally understood something which had, until then, eluded him. He understood then why Mr. Snow never left him on the long lead for too long... why he enjoyed it so, having Hal by his side. Hal was self-aware enough to recognize the reaction he'd just evoked in his newest recruit... to recognize it and hate him all the more for forcing that recognition. Even so, as much as he hated Cutler for it, Hal was a vampire cut from Mr. Snow's own cloth, molded and stretched into his very image... and he could no more resist that awed, worshipful terror than his master could.

Hal took Cutler's mouth that night, hard, violent, nearly suffocating the man in his urgency, as Fergus laughed and yelled encouragements from the other side of the room.

Intoxicating.

Hal gasped, came out of the vivid memory those words had invoked with a shudder and an almost painful throb of renewed arousal. The message was clear. Cutler was here. Fergus was here. Mr. Snow was coming. He could have them all... or none of them. He could choose Fergus, and Cutler... and Mr. Snow. Or he could choose Annie, and Eve... and Tom. His choice.

For now.

He had less than a day to decide. And as they parted ways, Hal knew only one thing for sure -- Fergus would see his will done, as he always had, no matter to what end it brought him... even his own.

And Hal would not weep for him.

He never did.