(Untitled)

[kingshit_lloyd]

[takes place after this and this]The party was getting unbearably, scorchingly hot, and Lloyd wondered how long he had before he started either breathing or pissing fire, because he was already sweating like a stuck pig. On second thought, those probably did more bleeding than sweating, but Lloyd had his bases covered either way -- there was a

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[kingshit_lloyd]

Waking up was a bad idea. Lloyd knew it before he even tried to open his eyes, and once he did make that ill-advised attempt, he cursed himself a moment later, groaning and putting a hand on his face to shield himself from the sunlight.

This must be what Dracula feels like, he decided, wondering if there was a blunt object nearby he could knock himself out with.

But the only object he could get his hands on was warm and sort of familiarly shaped. Lloyd carefully removed his hand, hoping Jaye was too busy sleeping off her own hangover to notice the accidental groping. He tried to sit up, squinting miserably -- must have been a hell of a party last night. Most of Lloyd's bodypaint had migrated to the sheet, along with a dazzling dose of glitter. Jaye was going to murder him when she woke up, but he supposed it would count as mercy-killing at this point.

And there was something else. Something worse than the hangover and the slimy feeling and the piss-sour taste in his throat. Some nightmare he wasn't remembering. Didn't want to remember.

"Oh shit," he breathed out and shut his eyes, realizing.

It was no nightmare. Just the next best thing.

[15_words]

Jaye was doing no better with the waking up, especially with Lloyd's HAND on her. She'd rolled away from him in the night, and now had a bright ass crack of sunshine beating on her eyes. It both blinded her and distracted her from immediately hitting Lloyd.

She waited for that until she'd sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, and saw just what Lloyd's 'COSTUME' had done to her bed. She should have known, but that didn't make her any less annoyed.

Slapping his shoulder with one hand and combing her hair back with the other, Jaye said, "Idiot you're cleaning that up." The hangover left her too grumpy to be remotely kind, but also too tired to put much bite into her words or the slap. Stumbling from bed, Jaye headed for the kitchen nook to get herself some water. And maybe a shotgun if the island was being nice.

[kingshit_lloyd]

"Sure," Lloyd said hoarsely, wincing a little. He suspected that anything less than complete agreement would turn this morning even more unpleasant - probably more painful, too - and secretly hoped he could get away with dumping the sheets somewhere in the jungle and just getting her new ones, because washing all that shit off seemed next to impossible.

He moved to the edge of the bed, watching Jaye with hopeful eyes when she went to fetch some water.

He didn't want to think about Flagg. He didn't want to think at all. And considering that the hangover was making his brain even fuzzier than usual, that could be arranged.

[15_words]

FUCK her head hurt. Wine never did her over this bad. That wasn't wine. That was some shit they cooked up in a bathtub in Tijuana. If they were only anywhere NEAR Tijuana. At least then she'd know where it came from.

As she moved towards the kitchen, miraculously staying on two feet, she took a quick glance down at her shorts, just to make sure they WERE shorts and they weren't SUSPICIOUSLY ASKEW. They weren't, and thank God for that.

She got them each a glass of water, just because Lloyd had to be feeling worse than Jaye and Jaye felt pretty bad, and sat her ass back down on the bed without a word. Mostly just a few grunts.

[kingshit_lloyd]

"Thanks," said Lloyd, who was definitely feeling worse than pretty bad -- closer to fucking terrible, like a NASCAR car after a real lively race. He took the glass and drained it in a few thirsty gulps, then spent a long minute hunched over with his fingers pressed against his eyes, half expecting a swarm of fire ants to come pouring out of the sockets.

Hydration came with its pros and cons; on one hand, Lloyd was no longer sure he was in the process of a slow, agonizing death, but on the other, his brain was starting to kick in, feebly but steadily. No matter how hard he tried to avoid it, all he could think about was Flagg's hand around his neck, the heat of his breath radiating all the way to Lloyd's spine, his fingers wrapped around the stone -- Christ, that fucking necklace was still hanging around his neck, as incriminating as a smoking gun. Lloyd reached to touch the stone, unconsciously covering it before he turned to look at Jaye.

His stomach felt hollow and he needed to say something, even if right now, just putting a sentence together seemed like an awfully big undertaking.

"Jaye," he started, talking through a rodent-sized lump in his throat. Oh Jesus. "My boss is here. My ex-boss. Remember I told you about him?"

Unsurprisingly, it only occurred to him how stupid the question was after it had exited his mouth.

[15_words]

Half her water gone and her head nearly between her knees, Jaye didn't respond at first. Why the fuck should she care about Lloyd's boss? It was too hard to think and it didn't make sense. It was a long, hard mental road to follow to get from their current situation to whatever employment Hell Lloyd had been in before.

...Oh wait, no it wasn't.

She lifted her head slowly, the 'give me no shit' look in her eye only augmented by the general deathly pallor and mad cap of hair.

"The fucking DEVIL?"

[kingshit_lloyd]

Jaye looked fucking scary, rendering Lloyd speechless for a moment. He had a feeling that if he answered her wrong, she would start shooting hangover-fueled lasers from her eyes.

And he already had a hell of a headache going.

"Yeah, him," he confirmed numbly, leaning his forehead on his hand to try and take some pressure off his skull. "He ain't exactly Lucifer, though -- goes by Randall Flagg. Or whatever the fuck name he's using these days." It probably didn't make any kind of sense to her, but it wasn't like he could tell her the whole story, or even half of it. "He's bad fucking news, Jaye," he muttered, glancing between her and the floor, his voice wavering for a moment. "You've got no idea."

[15_words]

Jaye blinked at him slowly, trying to fully process this information. Why hadn't he told her this BEFORE she'd gotten wasted last night?

"..Is THAT why you were puke-on-yourself drunk last night?" she demanded. The harshness of her own voice made her stop and put a hand to her forehead. "Way to raise the alarm, Lloyd," she said, quieter and drier. "You're a real Paul Revere. What the hell is he DOING here?" This was Twilight Zone Island, some backwater shit hole of bad sci-fi TV shows. What would the devil want with this hell hole?

...Obvious satanic description aside.

[kingshit_lloyd]

"Come on, I wasn't that drunk," Lloyd insisted, not very convincingly. He was sweaty and stinky and covered with smudged paint, but he didn't think he smelled specifically of puke, and he trusted his nostrils when it came to this sort of thing. His memory of the party was still foggy as fuck, but he was pretty sure he'd thrown up on the ground, not on himself. Besides, he wasn't sure Jaye was one to talk when it came to falling back on booze as a way of coping.

Speaking of raising alarms, though, he needed to talk to Glen, as soon as possible. Lloyd wasn't looking forward to that one bit.

"How the fuck should I know? He didn't fax me his plans before showing up," Lloyd muttered, sounding more tired than annoyed, and more annoyed than scared, which was an improvement on earlier. "What's anybody doing here? I don't think it's a planned vacation sorta thing, probably more like a crash landing." He sighed. "Or he might be looking to take over the island -- I don't fucking know."

[15_words]

It was partly because her head felt like a hundred pounds of cotton, and partly because she couldn't believe that Lloyd would actually make SENSE, but it took Jaye ten seconds of blank staring to put two and two together.

"Wait a minute," she said suddenly, shaking her head. And then stopped THAT fucking quick. "If he's stuck here like the rest of us, then what CAN he do? He hasn't got any powers or demons to possess people or even a fucking pitchfork. He's just Joe Schmo. Put him in the jail cell thing and be done with it. ...He doesn't have a pitchfork, right?" That could be problematic.

[kingshit_lloyd]

Now it was Lloyd's turn to stare, frowning hard for good measure. He knew deep down that what Jaye was saying was true, but there was a big gap between realizing and accepting it. The idea of Flagg being stuck like the rest of them, with no tricks up his sleeve, just a normal everyday guy... well, it was crazy. It struck Lloyd as amusing, frightening and impossible all at once.

"I guess you're right," he admitted cautiously, unsure what to do with this new understanding. Flagg was fucking dangerous no matter what, that much he was sure of. "But nobody's gonna just go and lock him up -- blank slate, remember?" He sounded bitter, but it was the one rule he had no intention of arguing against; if it hadn't been for the whole blank slate business, Lloyd would have been the proud owner of his very own prison cell.

"And no pitchfork last time I checked," he said, because she'd asked. "Just some Egyptian god crap. Said he was Seth or some weird shit like that."

[15_words]

Jaye still had enough energy in her to screw up her face and look at Lloyd funny. Egyptian crap? Yeah, parading around in a skirt didn't sound like the ultimate big bad at all.

"Seth like the third son of Adam or Seth like the Egyptian god? Because Seth wasn't even really evil, just the god of the desert and necessary chaos. I think we have enough necessary chaos. Whoa." She stopped, hard, for a long moment, wondering when the fuck she actually started paying attention to the crap Aaron spouted. YEARS ago, too. THAT also threw her for a loop, and she stared at the floor for a while.

"Okay, but the first time he pulls shit, he's out," she reasoned. "Throw his ass in jail. Anything." Come on, really, what was the WORST he could do?

[kingshit_lloyd]

Lloyd gave her a look that was stuck halfway between disturbed and impressed. "Yeah, the second one. God of storms and chaos, that's what he said." It made sense, he supposed -- Flagg had always been real fond of messing shit up, which, way Lloyd understood it, was what chaos was all about. Then again, maybe Flagg had just picked that costume because he'd wanted to look exotic or mysterious or something. "He's pretty fucking evil, though," he added, in case Jaye had any doubts about it.

He sat with his elbows on his knees, trying to think. Jail seemed like a pretty neat option, only things weren't quite as simple as Jaye put them. Flagg had a hold on him in ways he couldn't even explain, even now, and the Walkin' Dude had his special ways of doing things. Lloyd had a feeling that he could make things bad for him - and not just him - without even breaking any laws. Without breaking a sweat, either.

He nodded, anyway, looking away from Jaye. There was so much he could tell her without freaking her right out or making her run the other way.

And that was about the last thing he wanted to do.

"How do you know all that Bible stuff, anyway?" he asked after a long pause, warily curious.

[15_words]

"My brother," she said. Shifting uncomfortably in her seat, Jaye finished off her glass of water, then slowly stood. "He was getting his PhD in comparative religion. I need more water," she muttered before walking to the sink again.