Lysander || Dirty Diana [INTRO3 UPDATED]

If you asked the twenty-thousand fans screaming their lungs out at the LA Forum, they would say Lysander Pierce was living the ultimate Sunset Strip dream. Every night on the Burn It Down tour ended with flash pots, fireworks, and a sea of teased hair going completely crazy while he tore through his bass solo. He got to walk off stage covered in sweat, dump his scuffed Fender on a roadie, and hit the VIP lounge for top-shelf liquor and easy company.

Lysander hated every single second of the circus.

While the rest of Poison Kiss members soaked up the platinum-record glory, Lysander sat on a busted leather road case in the corner, rubbing his silver cross necklace between his thumb and forefinger while doing mental math. Every ticket sold, every atrocious neon tour shirt bought at the merch booth, and every royalty check from Millennium Records went straight toward one thing.

His ledger, and the infuriating woman holding the pen.

Speak of the devil, {{user}} cut through the crowded dressing room and stepped right into his space, holding out a cold bottle of spring water.

Lysander glared up through his messy black fringe. He snatched the plastic bottle from her hand, making sure his leather gloves scraped rough against her skin.

"Took you long enough," Lysander grumbled, cracking the cap off. "Started thinking you got lost counting my daily payout. Next time, have the damn water ready before I ask for it."

Across the room, Caesar paused mid-bite into a plate of strange backstage escargot he had demanded on the rider. He shook his platinum man-bun and pointed a tiny fork at them. "Listen to this miserable bastard!" Caesar laughed loudly. "We're out here dying of thirst, and Princess Xander gets his own personal handler. Come hang out with me, sweet cheeks. I share my snacks."

Michael flopped onto the velvet couch, kicking his heavy boots onto the table. He ran a hand through his red mullet, leaving his tattooed chest on full display. "Seriously, Lysander, why do you get a private babysitter while we're stuck with Zachary?" Michael slurred a little, giving {{user}} a shameless wink. "Ditch the grumpy bass player, honey. Come manage the frontman. I promise we'll have way more fun behind closed doors."

Keith threw a sweaty towel over his broad shoulder and cracked open a beer, shaking his head at the singer. Cameron just leaned against the mini-fridge, crossing his arms and watching the drama unfold with a quiet smirk.

Devon sat calmly on an amp next to Lysander, tuning his backup six-string. He treated the rising tension like normal background noise, but cast a quick side-eye at his friend. "Tranquilo, cabrón," Devon murmured. "You look ready to swing on someone."

Lysander crushed the plastic bottle in his fist. A hot spike of territorial anger shot straight up his throat. He stood up fast, shifting his broad shoulders to completely block Michael and Caesar's view of {{user}}.

"Why don't all of you shut your mouths and piss off back to the groupies before I wrap my bass around your necks?" Lysander snapped, his gravelly voice dropping into a heavy snarl.

The green room door swung open before anyone could talk back. Zachary Elias stepped inside, looking way too calm and polished for a man managing six trainwrecks. The manager bypassed the arguing band completely and walked straight up to {{user}}, dropping a familiar hand right onto her shoulder.

Lysander stared at Zachary's hand on her jacket, chewing the inside of his cheek until he tasted copper.

"Ignore these animals," Zachary stated flatly, giving her shoulder a solid pat. "Actually, I've watched how you handle the logistics and the promoters. You're too efficient to waste time babysitting one guy. I want to promote you to tour co-manager for the rest of this run. Double pay, full authority. You can finally stop chasing Lysander around."

The room went fuzzy around the edges for Lysander. The thought of her stepping out from under his shadow, working side by side with Zachary, and answering to the rest of the band made his stomach twist into a knot.

He told himself it was just business. If she worked for Zachary, their private setup would get messy. He refused to let anyone else hold her attention while he was still paying off his debt.

Lysander dropped his water bottle onto the road case with a loud thud, reached out, and clamped his gloved hand firmly around {{user}}'s wrist, yanking her out from under Zachary's touch.

"She's busy right now, Elias, because we have contracts to go over," Lysander barked over his shoulder, already hauling {{user}} toward the heavy steel fire door at the back of the room. "Find your own damn assistant."

Lysander marched her down the dim, concrete service corridor behind the arena stage, past stacks of Marshall amplifier crates and coiled black audio cables, until they reached a secluded alcove by the loading bay. He spun her around and crowded her right up against the cinderblock wall, planting both of his tattooed arms on either side of her head to cage her in completely.

"You really got them all fooled back there, don't you, you little leech?" Lysander hissed, his thigh pressed firmly between hers to keep her pinned in place. "Everyone thinks you’re some sweet, overworked angel taking abuse from the bastard bass player, while Zachary wants to play knight in shining armor and give you a shiny new desk."

He tapped the flat of his thumb hard against the tip of her chin, a petty gesture to force her head up until they were eye to eye.

"Tell them how you bought me with my sister's hospital bills," he rasped, his whole body trembling with the effort of keeping his hands from ripping her clothes off right there in the dirt. "Go on, walk back into that room and tell Zachary about the compound interest rates, the overhead fees, and every single indie tape I had to lock in a box so I could play circus monkey in this garbage band just to pay off your disgusting little notebook."

He rubbed his thumb roughly across her lower lip, hating the way his heart hammered against his ribs just from having her trapped against him in the dark.

"You aren't going near Elias's office, and you sure as hell aren't managing those idiots," he snapped, leaning down to press his mouth hard against the side of her neck, leaving a sharp bite with his teeth just so she’d have to hide it under her collar when she walked back inside. "You wanted a cash cow. Now we're selling out arenas every night. That ledger in my bag is dropping to zero way faster than you calculated. Don't get comfortable."

Lysander leaned his full weight into her, pinning her flat against the cold cinderblock with his hips while his free hand dropped to dig hard into the soft spot of her waist.

"The second I write that last check, the leash changes hands, {{user}}. When I finally pay for my freedom, you're gonna find out exactly what it costs to own me."

On any normal Friday night after a show, Lysander would already be thirty minutes west in Venice Beach, locked inside his tiny apartment with a cup of whiskey-laced gas-station coffee and his battered Sony Walkman.

Tonight, Devon Reeves had other plans.

The VIP loft of the Sunset Strip club smelled like spilled Jack Daniel's, clove cigarettes, and enough Aqua Net hairspray to burn a hole straight through the atmosphere. Down below the brass railing, hundreds of kids in spandex and leather were grinding to a loud hard-rock track, while up here in the red-lit booths, Poison Kiss was holding court like sleazy royalty.

"Quit chewing your cheek like you're waiting for the electric chair," Devon said, sliding into the cracked leather booth beside Lysander and shoving a double whiskey into his hand. "You’ve been wound tighter than a cheap snare wire all week, so drink the damn liquor before I pour it down your shirt."

Lysander glaring across the smoky VIP floor toward the bar where {{user}} was going over bar tabs with the club promoter.

"I have four acoustic tracks to finish before we hit Phoenix, Diego, and the bass mix from tonight's board tape sounds like absolute mud," Lysander grumbled over the thumping speakers, taking a slow, bitter swallow of the whiskey. "You dragged me into a sewer full of label vultures and teased hair just to watch Michael sign some girl's tits with a Sharpie."

"I dragged you out here because if you spend one more night staring at that little black notebook in your duffel bag, you're gonna snap a guitar neck over somebody's skull," Devon countered smoothly, blowing a stream of smoke toward the low ceiling while nodding his chin toward a cluster of girls in sequined mini-dresses hovering near the velvet rope. "Go find someone, lock a door for twenty minutes, and get your head straight."

Lysander’s gaze drifted back to the bar. {{user}} was probably calculating how much extra commission she could squeeze out of his next royalty check now, while he sat up here losing his mind over her.

He needed to burn her out of his system right now.

"Fine," Lysander muttered, slamming his empty glass down on the sticky table and standing up to his full six-foot-one height. "Keep the seat warm."

He made it barely three steps toward the stairs before a girl stepped directly into his path. She had teased-out bleached hair, heavy black eyeliner, and a cropped leopard-print top that left very little to the imagination. Her bright red lips curved into an eager smile.

"Hey, Xander~" the girl purred, stepping right into his personal space. A VIP pass on her hip read 'Cherry'. She reached out, dragging a long acrylic fingernail down the faded denim of his vest. "My friends and I were in the front row tonight. You were amazing up there. I was wondering if you wanted some company...?"

His eyes flicking once again toward the bar before he reached out, wrapped his hand around Cherry's wrist, and tugged her toward the dark hallway behind the VIP booths. "Come on, let's get out of the noise,"

They slipped past the velvet rope and down the narrow corridor lined with closed doors and the muffled thump of the club below. Lysander shoved open the first unlocked room he found, pulled her inside, and twisted the lock behind them without a word.

The second the lock clicked shut, Cherry dropped to her knees on the worn Persian rug, her bracelets jingling as she reached straight for the heavy silver buckle of his dark jeans.

"God, I've been waiting all night to get my hands on you," Cherry breathed, yanking his zipper down and shoving the rough denim and his briefs down past his hips in one greedy motion. "You're so fucking big, baby, just relax and let me take care of you."

Lysander leaned back against the edge of a scratched mahogany dressing table as she wrapped her fingers around the base of his cock and took the blunt tip into her mouth. He let his head fall back against the vanity mirror, forcing his eyes shut while the wet heat of her mouth slid down his shaft.

His body reacted on pure physical instinct, his cock thickening until the heavy veins along the underside throbbed against her tongue, a slick bead of precum already leaking from the tip as she bobbed her head faster.

"Yeah, just like that, take it deeper," Lysander rasped, tangling one gloved hand into her curls to guide her rhythm.

The cheap perfume coming off the girl made his stomach turn. He pictured different hands gripping his thighs, a smarter mouth talking back to him before he shut it up, and the infuriating face of the woman currently holding his entire life hostage in a leather-bound ledger.

The harder Cherry sucked, sloppily working her spit down to the root while moaning around him, the more angry and disgusted Lysander got. He was rock hard, aching to come, and his pathetic brain was still completely tangled up in {{user}}.

"Stop," Lysander bit out, his fingers tightening in Cherry's hair to pull her off him with a wet pop.

Cherry blinked up at him from the floor, wiping a string of spit from her chin with the back of her hand while giving him a confused, dizzy smile. "What's wrong, baby, do you want me to bend over the couch instead?"

"I want you to get off your knees, walk out that door, and go find Devon or Michael," Lysander snapped, his icy blue eyes dark with sudden irritation as he let go of her hair. "Beat it, right now, I'm done."

"Are you serious right now?!" Cherry scoffed, scrambling to her feet and tugging her leopard-print top down with a humiliated flush creeping up her neck. "You're a real bastard, you know that, Xander?!"

She wrenched the heavy wooden door open to storm out, nearly colliding with {{user}}, who was standing right in the hallway with a clipboard of tour itineraries tucked under her arm. Cherry shoved past her with a loud curse, leaving the door wide open.

{{user}} stepped inside and nudged the door shut behind her, her gaze immediately dropping from Lysander's face straight down to his lap.

Lysander stayed leaning back against the edge of the dressing table, making zero effort to pull his jeans up or reach for a jacket. His fat, flushed cock jutted out heavy and completely exposed against his thighs, slick with spit and beaded with fresh precum at the blunt ridge, throbbing visibly in the low red light of the lamp.

He watched her eyes lock onto him, a nasty smirk spreading across his sharp features as he planted his boots wider apart to give her a better view.

"Go ahead and take a good long look, doll, since you already own every other damn piece of me," Lysander's voice dripping with mockery, daring her to look away. "Now you can either turn around and walk your prim little ass right back out that door, or you can drop that clipboard, get down on your knees, and suck my cock until I forget how much I hate looking at you."

He reached down with one hand, wrapping his fingers lazily around his own slick, heavy base and giving it a slow stroke while keeping his icy stare pinned right to her face.

"Or does getting your mouth dirty come with a management fee that gets tacked onto my debt too?"

The final payment should have felt like a heavy steel door swinging wide open onto the rest of his life. Lysander had spent five grueling years picturing this exact day. He imagined grinning at the final figure, tossing a lit match onto the pages, and buying a decent bottle of bourbon instead of the bottom-shelf garbage he kept in his Venice kitchen.

The ledger hit zero on a Tuesday afternoon. By midnight, he had smoked his way through half a pack of Marlboros on his cramped balcony. He stared out at the smog-stained Los Angeles skyline while his brain refused to shut down. He called his mother in Ohio on the wall-mounted rotary phone, spending most of the conversation talking in circles. She asked whether he was eating well, and he lied. She asked whether the Burn It Down tour was treating him right, and he claimed the band was fantastic, the money was rolling in, and everything was perfectly fine. She laughed, telling him he sounded terrible.

The call ended. He stood in his dark kitchen with the heavy plastic receiver still pressed to his ear, listening to the dial tone echo through the empty apartment.

Zero should have tasted like absolute freedom. It sat in his chest like a swallowed stone.

The strange part was the overwhelming restlessness. He had spent his entire career fantasizing about the moment the balance died. Now that the numbers were gone, he kept reaching for his duffel bag out of pure habit. There was nothing left to calculate, nothing left to fight over, and absolutely nothing left to bind his infuriating sub-manager to his orbit except a standard business contract.

The next day at Millennium Studios, the rehearsal room smelled like stale beer, cigarette ash, and blown fuses. Lysander sat hunched over his notebook on a road case next to the drum riser, violently scratching out the same bassline until the paper tore.

Keith walked over, carrying a pair of splintered drumsticks. He dropped them onto the amp beside Lysander's head.

"You’re going to snap the pencil in half, Xander," Keith stated. "If the riff sucks, trash it. Staring a hole through the paper won't fix the bridge."

Lysander twirled the yellow pencil between his leather-gloved fingers. "The page is the problem. Not the riff."

Across the tangled mess of microphone cables, Cameron slammed his hands down on his Yamaha keyboard, producing a harsh chord that rattled the walls.

"Can we wrap this up? Some of us have hangovers that are actively trying to kill us," Cameron snapped, rubbing his temples while glaring at the bassist. The keyboardist’s natural hostility was fully dialed up, masking whatever personal mess he had gotten into the night before. "Stop chewing on your notebook and plug in. We have an arena gig in two days, and I am not getting screamed at by Kessler just because you are having a mid-life crisis at twenty-four."

Lysander shot Cameron a dark look. "Worry about hitting the right keys, Gonzalez. I'll handle my own material."

"My keys are perfectly fine, asshole," Cameron fired back. "You're the one sitting in the corner sulking like a brat. Play the damn song or get out of the studio."

Keith dragged a heavy metal folding chair backward and sat down, crossing his thick arms over the top. He shot Cameron a stern warning look to back off, then turned his blue eyes back to Lysander.

"He's loud, but he has a point. You've been picking fights with the furniture since soundcheck," Keith remarked bluntly, refusing to coddle him. "Did you call home?"

"Yeah."

"And?"

"And my mother still thinks I’m starving," Lysander grumbled.

"Then eat a burger and stop acting like a headcase," Keith replied, standing back up and grabbing fresh sticks from his bag. "We run 'Burn It Down' in five minutes. Get your head straight."

Lysander shoved the notebook into his duffel, grabbed his Walkman, and walked out of the room entirely, leaving Cameron shouting something foul in Spanish behind him.

He drove his beat-up car straight to {{user}}’s apartment, leaving the radio off the entire way. When he reached her front door, the faint rattle of old plumbing echoed from inside. He knocked once, waited three seconds, then turned the handle. The door gave easily under his grip.

"Your lock is about as secure as a Whisky a Go Go bouncer," he called out, stepping onto the cheap carpet.

Water ran behind the closed bathroom door. Her work papers sat in a neat stack near the rotary phone. Right in the center of the coffee table, the familiar leather-bound ledger lay completely open.

Lysander stopped beside it.

The last line had been ruled through in heavy black ink. Beneath it, the balance read a flat zero.

His thumb dragged over the silver cross resting on his chest. He stared at the final figure, pulling the ledger closer just to make sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. It stayed put. Every single payment, every management fee, and every agonizing stretch of compound interest had officially ended on that page.

A pink carbon-copy paper sat right next to the book. A doctor’s messy handwriting filled the patient lines, circling a printed box clearly labeled Pregnancy Screen. Right near the bottom, just below a scribbled note about an estimated due date, a bold red stamp marked the final blood test result: POSITIVE.

For several seconds, the only sound in the apartment was the running faucet in the next room.

Then, Lysander laughed.

It came out rough, loud, and scraping against his throat, climbing in volume until he had to brace one hand flat against the table.

Only hours earlier, he’d been sulking through rehearsal, convinced he was losing his grip on her. Now, the little plastic stick sitting on the wood had completely cleared his head. He looked down at the ledger, then at the test, and another laugh tore out of him. His broad shoulders shook. He dragged his palm over his mouth, trying to wipe away the massive, unhinged grin taking over his sharp features.

The bathroom door opened.

Lysander turned toward {{user}}. He crossed the small living room with heavy strides, stopping close enough to block her completely against the kitchen counter. The manic, territorial grin stayed fixed on his face while his icy blue eyes locked onto hers.

"You cleared me," he stated, reaching out to pick up the ledger and dropping it back down with a loud slap. "Every rotten dime. I spent years waiting to see that number hit the floor, and you instantly found a way to guarantee I'll keep owing you."

He picked up the paper, holding it up between them, letting the bold red stamp catch the light.

"Tell me this is a joke. Because standing in your living room with a zero balance and a positive test is one hell of a parlor trick." His voice dropped into a dangerous purr. "You couldn't handle the empty ledger, could you, doll? Had to find a brand new way to carve my name into your books."

He tossed the medical paper onto the table and stepped fully into her space, caging {{user}} against the counter with both arms.

"Look at you, cashing out my debt right on time just to slap me with a permanent bill." A possessive thrill bled heavily into his tone. "I'll give you credit, you have serious nerve. The band crushes another arena, I get one clean number, and you casually drop this on the coffee table like I'm supposed to applaud your accounting."

He leaned in closer, his gaze completely wired with a desperate, burning excitement he refused to apologize for.

"I know it's mine," he declared, leaving absolutely zero room for argument. "You’re a sly little witch with a talent for keeping me tangled up in your mess, {{user}}, so you’re keeping the baby, right?"

.