When the water started running again, it was because of Lloyd.

Okay, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration—but at the same time it wasn't, really. Lloyd had supervised the teams working on the pipelines and the hydration systems. He'd made sure everyone was appropriately outfitted so as to avoid toxins getting in the sewers. He'd even gone and helped install an underground well so that the water could flow from natural springs buried deep within the earth, uninterrupted. And yeah, other people had known more about how to do it, and other people had done most of the actual physical labor—but Lloyd had read up on the shit. Lloyd had heard people complaining they hated the inconvenience of having to always drink bottled water. Lloyd had gone to the library and read books, actual physical books, something he hadn't done since—fuck, eighth grade, maybe—and he'd found out about the water system of old Las Vegas and he'd shown it to people until he'd found someone who knew what all the diagrams meant, and he'd had the whole thing worked out, all on his own.

Of course he'd run it by Flagg when he'd initially gotten the idea. Flagg had looked puzzled, as though genuinely confused as to why the residents were unhappy about the water shortage. When he'd given the project the green light he'd done so with an expression of amused indulgence: whatever you say, Lloyd. Then he'd gone on doing whatever Flagg-stuff he did and Lloyd had gotten the project underway and now—

—now everything was done. And Flagg didn't fucking care.

All day people had been coming up to thank Lloyd for his work. Whitney had thanked him three separate times because having actual running water from the tap was going to make it so much easier to run the kitchen. Lloyd was standing by the fountain outside the Bellagio watching the thin trickle of water running through its pipes (they hadn't wanted to use too many resources on unnecessary things like fountains, but there was runoff, and anyway it was pretty in a sad sort of way, like most things from before). In the morning he'd smiled and been gracious, perhaps overdoing it a little, when he'd thanked everyone. Sometimes Flagg would walk past on his way from one job to another and Lloyd would straighten his back a little each time, waiting, little surge of excitement in his chest—

—but Flagg never stopped. He never even acknowledged Lloyd was there. Lloyd was fucking sitting on the lip of the Bellagio fountain with his hat pulled down over his eyes to shield his face from the unrelenting sun and he'd sweated his way through days of more work than he'd ever done in his whole miserable life, he hadn't even really partaken in his new water system because he was too busy taking congratulations and waiting out any possible errors in the piping, and Flagg just—acted like it was any fucking day in New Vegas. He was going about in his fucking boots and jeans with his hair tied back against the heat and for all the attention he paid to Lloyd he might as well have been in his suite in the Grand, getting sucked down to the hilt by Julie fucking Lawry, or taking a real shower for the first time instead of just wiping his skin with a damp cloth.

This was fucking ridiculous. Lloyd had worked his ass off. Flagg could've picked any son of a bitch he encountered from here to Phoenix, but he'd chosen Lloyd. He'd picked Lloyd, and now he just—didn't care.

Close to the end of the day Lloyd had stopped smiling when people came up to thank him. He'd stopped responding except to grunt a little in acknowledgment. Julie brought him a glass and asked didn't he want a drink, his cheeks were red, and he snapped at her, and she blinked, and then smiled, predatory, setting the glass down on the concrete edge of the fountain and folding her arms.

"You're in a mood," she said, cheerfully.

Lloyd glared up at her. "Fuck off."

"Baby, you look so tense." She sat down on the other side of him from the glass, sliding one hand down his arm. "Wanna talk about it?" Her mouth was about two inches from his ear. "You're the big man around town, you know. You should be happy. You should have a reward—"

Her hand was on his thigh, threatening to slide between his legs. If he'd been in a better mood he might have allowed it; voyeurism didn't carry the same weight in the new world, with its air of post-virus desperation, people clinging to each other frantically, trying to shake off the memories and the unreal feeling of every day waking up and hearing the news until one morning there was no news at all—

—but his chest was burning, and he wanted to scream. He wanted Flagg to fucking look at him, for fuck's sake. He put his hand on her wrist to push her away—

—and then a shadow fell across his lap. Things were harder to make out in the light of the dying sun, but it was immediately obvious who was standing over him. Lloyd looked up—and up, and up—and the shadowed familiar hooked-nose profile stared back down at him. The reddish eyes glinted beneath the wide brim of the hat.

"Evening, Lloyd," Flagg murmured. He inclined his head at Julie: "Miss Lawry," he said, and Julie got up. Her smile had dimmed slightly. Everyone was so scared of Flagg, even if they'd never admit it out loud. Lloyd wondered if it made him more or less pathetic that he hadn't felt that same fear since leaving the prison. Or maybe it was just harder to be afraid of anything when you'd eaten decomposing flesh off a human being.

Flagg waited until Julie had walked off. Then he sat in her place. He reached out and took the pendant in his fingers, stroking his thumb slowly over the rough edges of the flaw.

"You're angry with me," he said, after a long time. Lloyd swallowed. The heat in his face was no longer just from the sun.

"I just—"

"After this long parade of well-wishers congratulating you on your success, I'd think you'd be thrilled." Flagg shifted the pendant in a way that momentarily caught the last of the light. Lloyd had to look out over the desert, the dark shadows of mountains in the far distance.

"You do love attention, don't you, Lloyd?" Flagg asked, when Lloyd didn't say anything.

Lloyd shifted. He looked down at Flagg's long, slender fingers. He'd set down the pendant and was playing with the buttons on Lloyd's shirt, folding them in and out of their holes. His nail scraped Lloyd's skin and Lloyd couldn't hold back a shiver.

"I—when it's the right kind," Lloyd muttered, finally, and felt his face get even hotter. Why the fuck had he said that? Maybe Julie was right; maybe he was dehydrated or something. He reached for the glass she'd brought him and Flagg lifted his hand from his shirt to take it. He twisted his wrist and the glass transformed into a key. The same key he'd shown Lloyd in Phoenix, only bigger, and gone again in an instant.

"And what is the right kind of attention, Lloyd?"

Lloyd shook his head. Flagg was playing with his shirt buttons again. Now when he scraped his nail against his skin it felt deliberate. Lloyd was overwhelmed by the urge to reach down, take Flagg's hand, and bring it to his mouth.

"Do you mean you want my attention?" Flagg asked. His voice was impossibly soft in the space between them. The air was so, so still.

Lloyd swallowed again. His throat made a dry, clicking sound.

"The only right answer is the honest one," Flagg prompted after a moment, and Lloyd exhaled, sharply.

"Yes," he said, trying and failing to keep the irritation from his voice. "Yes, I want—I just thought you'd, that you'd thank me, or something, 'good job, Lloyd; I knew I made the right decision when I picked you—'"

Flagg's fingers tightened infinitesimally in Lloyd's shirt, and suddenly they were in his suite in the Grand. Lloyd was still trying to blink away the disorientation he felt from the jarring tug below his navel when Flagg shoved him back against the mattress, crawling between his legs. He ripped Lloyd's shirt open. He sank his teeth not ungently into the flesh beneath his pendant, and Lloyd made an embarrassing, keening noise in his throat.

"I trust you to do a good job without me looking over your shoulder all the time," he said, licking over the sore raw place where his teeth had been. "But if you feel I've wronged you—"

"No, no," Lloyd gasped out—Flagg was moving lower now, towards his crotch, his pants unzipping on their own, fuck but this wasn't going to last long— "no, that isn't what I—" He couldn't fucking think around the hot, blistering lust which threatened to consume him. "I just w- fuck. I thought you—that you—"

"You want a reward," Flagg murmured, with his mouth over Lloyd's exposed cock. "Is that it? For doing such a good job?"

Lloyd moaned. He could already fucking feel it trying to rail up his spine.

"Well," Flagg murmured, "I suppose you've earned it just this once—"

Lloyd came almost before Flagg's mouth had fully closed around him. But it was all right. Apparently Flagg could summon unnatural refractory periods, too.