a/n: originally posted jan. 2023 on my tumblr, astralhux, with a slightly different ending

Most of his life Lloyd has been followed by animals; strange animals. Crows landing on light poles when he's walking home from the drugstore at midnight, stolen cigarettes wedged in the waistband of his jeans. Wolves gathering at the edge of the woods behind the trailer park, their snouts gleaming hellishly in the moonlight, coated in blood and saliva. Weasels gathering in the back alley behind Nacho's Grill where he worked for three weeks, age 15, washing dishes. He brought out slices of ham for them and they snatched it up with their greedy paws and needle-sharp teeth but they just kept coming back. Always those three: wolves, weasels, and crows.

(Oh my.)

He lands in the jail cell in Phoenix and he wants to eat the fingers that trail between the bars. He's so hungry; he can't remember ever being this hungry in his life. A weasel sneaks in and runs up the bars of the

(cage)

cell, examining the lock. Lloyd squints at it and whispers, can you get me out?, half-crazed, sitting here talking to a fucking weasel. But it looks at him for a long time like it understands what he's saying. Then it runs off, and he comes to take its place.

He. Him. The dark man. Randall Flagg. With his hat pulled down over his eyes; the sharp narrow jut of his nose just sticking out from under the brim. His hair curls down over his shoulders, dark as feathers, and there is something of the wolf about his face, the hunger in his smile or the soft snarl in his voice or just the leanness of his features. He points at the lock and it falls away. Lloyd scrambles to his feet. Into the man's arms. He hears something heavy and winged take off from a window beyond his line of vision. Footsteps in the corridor.

Flagg gives him his token. The flaw is as mesmerizing as the stone itself; Lloyd spends hours looking at it, stroking his thumb over it, the blood-red gash in the granite. Sometimes he thinks it's looking back at him. Sometimes when he looks away he sees an animal far in the distance; a bird, tilting its head. At night he dreams of too many teeth and wakes drenched in sweat. In the daytime he is the devil's right hand man, adopting Flagg's swagger, his confidence, the set in his shoulders. In the daytime he wants things — so much, he wants, but he can't voice it; he certainly can't have it.

He can't have it, he thinks, until he is looking out of a top-floor suite at the Bellagio one night. Everyone else is partying, celebrating the restoration of some essential, electricity or water. Lloyd is alone, or so he thinks, until he sees movement in the glass and then Flagg's hand is on his shoulder.

"You don't want to be with your friends, Lloyd?"

Lloyd swallows. Says, "They're not really my friends."

When Flagg laughs it is rusted machinery finally breaking down after years of disuse. After a moment he walks around so that they are face-to-face. He takes the flawed stone in his hand. His hat is tilted up; Lloyd can see his eyes. The red glow of them should be disconcerting, perhaps even frightening. It should be.

"You know I watched you your whole life," Flagg tells him.

"I know," Lloyd says. The wolf that tore open the throat of his second stepfather the night he touched Lloyd under his bedsheets. The crow that buried five silver dollars to hide from his mother's fifth boyfriend so that Lloyd could buy food for himself instead of liquor for the man. The weasel that curled over his feet to keep him from freezing to death the winter the heater broke in the trailer.

Flagg lets go of the stone. His fingers trail up Lloyd's throat, over his jaw. They curl Lloyd's hair behind his ear. Momentarily there is the familiar flash in Lloyd's mind of teeth. He thinks that should be frightening, too.

But when Lloyd shivers, fear has nothing to do with it. He sinks to his knees. He sees Flagg's hands grip the windowsill, hard enough to dent the wood. He thinks about that; that the devil is reacting so strongly to something he's done. Something curls, hot and dark, in the center of his chest.