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Fractured Heart: Chapter One

“Jim needs you to switch the right amp with the spare. Says it was fucking up big time at the Housenfuhrer set last night.”

Pausing with his hands on the handle of the plastic broom—with ends that were badly frayed because the owner of the concert venue was too cheap to replace anything until it was broken down into a useless husk—Theo grumbled to himself. The amps were rather heavy—while he liked to think of himself as a competently strong guy, it was still a struggle to move them by himself. Of course, another able-bodied assistant to help would have been lovely, but just as with his refusal to replace the broom, Jim refused to hire a sufficient number of people to handle the workload. The cheap-ass just expected the handful of employees he did have to work the jobs of five people simultaneously instead.

When he’d first gotten a job at Halo a year and a half prior, Theo had been so delighted he’d almost cried. Here was his ‘in’ to the professional music production world—working in such close proximity to the performers meant he was bound to find an opportunity to cross paths with and hopefully impress some music exec or agent or someone else with bargaining power in the industry who could get him a deal. Then he could finally escape being trapped into gigs DJing other people’s music in grimy underground nightclubs with floors that were perpetually sticky with spilled drinks, and find the time to work on producing his own original music that might actually see widespread release someday.

Even though he’d only been producing EDM for just under five years and still had a lot to learn, he liked to think that his current skill level was more than passing fair in quality. His roommate and best friend Siti seemed to think so—she wasn’t even particularly into EDM, and yet even she said his music was “bitchin’.” Maybe it was hubris to think he might be ready for something bigger, but…

“No one wants to listen to your crap ‘music.’ Stop wasting so much time on it and just be a model. Your pretty face is all you’re really good for, you know.” The echoing memory of that voice had him grimacing, shaking off the briefest of shudders as he placed the broom against a wall in the entrance hall then made his way towards the stairs leading up to the large stage that dominated the back half of the main room.

Halo certainly wasn’t the most high-tech concert venue available on that side of the outskirts beyond Los Angeles proper, nor was it the largest. Yet it was a popular venue for many musical artists to test out new material, or cultivate a more ‘intimate’ audience experience—sometimes even very large acts. Casting his gaze towards the empty floor as he stepped onto the stage still gave Theo’s stomach a lurch as he imagined what it must feel like to perform at a venue that was larger—to stand in front of thousands of people all screaming and staring at you, pouring your heart out into your music right there for the public to judge. No, thank you, sir.

One of his too-few coworkers Keenan was already on the stage fighting to move the broken amp—Theo passed him a nod of acknowledgement, but the middle-aged man only gave him a flat stare in return. Keenan wasn’t the most pleasant of individuals, Theo had discovered soon after getting hired—too many years working a shit job, he supposed. If Theo stayed on at Halo for another ten years or so, he’d probably end up with the same sort of easily-irritated disposition.

“Jim wants this switched,” Keenan muttered as Theo approached the other side of the amp, and Theo nodded rather than let him know he’d already been informed as much. Between the two of them, they struggled to corner-walk the amp to the far side of the stage, tucked away into the wings behind a curtain, then did the same backwards with the spare amp kept in the corner. Eventually, they’d have to use the forklift to take the bad one out and hopefully put it somewhere the repair techs could come out to look it over, but not today—the headliner for that night was due to show up at the venue in another two hours. They didn’t have time.

As he struggled to move the amps, a sheaf of coal-black hair worked its way free from under the clip he’d slid in before his shift, falling annoyingly into the path of his vision. Occasionally it stabbed into his eyes worse than the eyeliner that had leaked into them when he’d been too hasty applying it that morning. Growling softly, Theo did a head toss to flip it behind his ear, but it slid right back into the way. After a second attempt with no more success, Theo gave up with a sigh. Should’ve worn a bandana, though he’d wanted to show off the new cut to Siti in the box office without messing it up with bandana-hair first.

“Shouldn’t have hair like that, man,” Keenan commented disapprovingly as they both paused to lean against the replacement amp and wipe sweat from their brows. “Too much upkeep.” Keenan’s own hair was wiry and cropped extremely short—bet he didn’t need any prep at all.

Keenan might have been right, and once upon a time Theo would have agreed with him. His mother certainly would—she hated the style of personal expression he’d picked up since art college, and he had to forgo the eyeliner, the red eyeshadow, and certainly the black lipstick any time he visited back home or he’d hear no end of the lectures.

But since he’d slowly immersed himself in the rave community, he’d discovered a kind of welcoming atmosphere that was difficult to find elsewhere—certainly in the transaction-based “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” world of Los Angeles. The tagline often associated with the rave scene was PLUR: “Peace, Love, Unity, Respect,” and for the most part it seemed like the majority of participants honored that creed.

“Y-Yeah, well,” Theo replied with an empty laugh, taking in one more deep breath before he set to work switching all the cables over to the replacement amp. Eager to change the subject before Keenan reminded him any more of his mother’s complaints, he asked, “Who’s the h-headliner tonight, a-again?”

Keenan’s eyes narrowed—like a lot of people, he wasn’t fond of the 0.5 seconds longer it sometimes took Theo to get through a sentence with his stutter, but for once the curmudgeonly older man withheld his tongue on that topic. “Kylie Simone is opening. Lysander Delion is the main set.”

Oh—right. Tonight was a pop music concert. Theo couldn’t help grimacing at that. He hated all forms of pop, found it grating and soulless, manufactured by committee to be the most “earwormy” to generate sales rather than use the creative medium of music to convey anything with human intention. Ironically, it sounded more artificial to him than his most preferred genre EDM—the kind of music that actually used nothing but machines to produce.

And Lysander Delion was a step below even the awfulness of pop music in general—he was a nepobaby. His father owned Everest Entertainment, one of if not the largest record label companies in the Americas. That pretty much guaranteed Lysander a signing as long as he could at the minimum ululate into a microphone without sounding like a dying cat. And even if he did, they could always fix that with autotune.

Of course, Theo couldn’t think of any specific songs he could confidently attribute to the pop star—it wasn’t his kind of music, so he didn’t go out of his way to listen to it on purpose. But surely he’d heard it on the overhead speakers in the mall or maybe from someone’s cell phone as they played it at max volume on the city bus, and he was sure he’d hated it then without even knowing whose music it was.

After getting the cords straightened out, Theo returned to the front hallway to resume sweeping the last of the garbage left over from the night before—Uly had been on shift, not Theo, and Uly always did a shitty job whenever he was tasked with cleaning. Or organizing flyers at the box office. Or dusting off the equipment between uses. Or…pretty much any task he was given, really. Theo was sure Uly must be the son of the venue owner or something or surely he would have been fired by now, but Theo hadn’t cared enough about the surly asshole to look into it.

An hour and a half of other mundane cleaning and set up tasks ticked by with agonizing slowness, until one of his coworkers came into the backstage area to let them know that one of the performers was pulling into the garage. Most of the others made their way towards the back entrance at the mention of that, the women especially—given how Lysander Delion was rumored to be physically gorgeous as well as a (if you liked that sort of music) good singer, of course he had a legion of fangirls hiding in wait anywhere one might go in the US—or beyond, if the crowd sizes even in places like India and Singapore were taken into account. Theo’s own grandmother had probably heard of him all the way down in her tiny village of Seonsan in South Korea, and she didn’t even own a TV.

Rolling his eyes at the breathless excitement from some of his coworkers, Theo stayed at his task—getting the freshly-laid cords taped down so no one tripped on them and sued the venue for a bazillion dollars—and a moment later, the women returned wearing obvious looks of disappointment. Ah, just the opening act, then.

Another half hour later, and the concert hall employees were starting to shift nervous looks back and forth. Some of the headliner’s sound tech team had shown up earlier in the day to get their own equipment set up, but not the headliner or his background band themselves, meaning they couldn’t yet do final soundchecks to ensure everything was set up perfectly before go-time. Though two more hours remained before doors would open to concert attendees, sometimes unforeseen complications during set-up could push the start time and music venue fans were not known for their patience over unexpected delays. Especially the younger, predominantly female fans like those who were likely to turn out for a heartthrob pop idol like Lysander Delion.

Theo’s already low opinion of this celebrity he had never breathed the same air as fell even lower as the window before lateness drew ever shorter. Apparently Lysander had reached the level of fame where he felt like other people’s time wasn’t as valuable as his—if he hadn’t already been that presumptuous since childhood, seeing how he’d been born with a proverbial silver spoon in his mouth.

At last, almost 40 minutes past his scheduled time for arrival, a large black stretch-SUV that could only belong to someone who thought he was the current Prince of Pop arrived at the back of the hall. Theo was fuming by then—even if he wasn’t the only employee there, Jim was known to arbitrarily attribute blame anything that went wrong on whoever happened to be in his line of sight at the time, and Theo had experienced the brunt of his misguided ire plenty of occasions already.

God, he really needed to quit this job. A year and a half in and the closest he’d gotten to talking to a music exec was getting sent on an errand to buy a very specific brand of cherry cola when the headliner that night had been having a hissy fit and no one else was available to answer her irrational demands.

“He’s here!”

Three seconds after Becca, the brunette light tech with the half-shaved head and dark red eyeliner he meant to ask the brand name of one of these days, squealed this announcement, two other women in the building shrieked their excitement and the group of them descended towards the garage like a pack of cougars on the hunt. Theo debated going with them just to catch a look at whoever this prick was so he knew what he was dealing with, but he figured he’d see the jerk soon enough whenever His Highness finally showed up on stage for sound check.

“Oh…guess Lysander’s here, then?” said a female voice from over his shoulder as Theo checked that the vending machines were stocked with enough change and Theo turned to see his friend facing him with a wry smirk. Unlike the other women, Siti was as unimpressed by celebrities and influencers as he was—it only took so many interactions with some spoiled brat screaming that the people working with them were “getting in the way of their lighting” before one lost any element of feeling starstruck. Anyone with half a brain did, anyway.

“S-Sounds like,” Theo grumbled in agreement, and just as he said it, breathless, giggling voices echoed across the empty dance floor as a gaggle of women and several men followed the figure who floated onto the stage in a shimmer of silvery rhinestones and a ridiculously pink feather boa. Some of the crowd were from the venue, others must have come with the singer—agents and make-up artists and a personal assistant or three. Probably bodyguards as well, famous as Lysander was.

Shifting the dozen or so feet from the off-center snack hall into the main area to get a clear look towards the stage, Theo stopped in the shadows and narrowed his eyes as he stared observationally across the wide space at that evening’s headliner; the one who had deigned not to show up until little more than an hour for setup remained.

Lysander Delion was the sort of person every head turned to whenever he entered a room, whether you liked the guy or not.

Sporting a surfer’s tan and the kind of golden wavy curls that darker-haired individuals would spend hundreds of dollars every other month bleaching and dyeing their hair to imitate, the singer had the nerve to even have an aesthetically pleasing bone structure—masculine but not too masculine, wide shoulders and an athletic build to match his impressive height. His teeth were probably the most eye-catching part of him, beyond his flamboyant clothing—pearly white and perfectly straight; they were probably flippers, rather than the teeth he’d grown in as a preteen. No way that brilliant grin he was flashing at everyone was 100% natural.

A soft sigh next to him had Theo jerking his gaze sideways, furrowing his brows in dismay at the fact that even Siti seemed to be feeling awestruck by the sheer magnificent stage presence of the celebrity, though she quickly shook her head and the glazed look dropped away from her eyes. “Guess he’s kinda hot,” she admitted begrudgingly. “Bet he’s a total asshole, though.”

“D-Definitely,” Theo agreed. That type always was.

Enough space lay between himself and the pop star that Theo couldn’t make out the words being exchanged between Lysander and his entourage, but he supposed most of it was nonsense catering and flattery and whatever else the prick needed to hear as much as he needed oxygen to breathe. Theo ignored them, returning to refilling the coins in the vending machine then sweeping the entranceway one more time. Siti had already moved to her customary spot behind the half-window in the box office, sighing as she logged into the computers, no doubt preparing herself mentally to deal with the incoming horde of fangirls.

Scuffling feet from the closer edge of the main area had him looking upward, meeting Jim’s perpetual scowl with a soft scowl of his own. “What are you doing?” Theo’s boss hissed, apparently having forgotten that he was the one who had tasked Theo with sweeping the hallway again. “Get on stage. You’re needed for sound check.”

Biting his tongue, Theo only nodded haltingly, stopping long enough to tuck the broom behind the box office doorway then dusting his hands off on his black slacks as he walked along the outside of the main area towards the curtains that separated it from backstage. The slacks were polyester and he absolutely hated them, but they were part of workplace uniform regulations—as if anyone would notice or care if he wore cotton rather than polyester. Jim was just a control freak like that, using his limited power as the concert venue head manager to enact petty restrictions on his vastly underpaid minions.

The voices grew louder as he passed through the heavy black curtain, and he could identify the singer’s voice immediately without having heard it before—only a celebrity used to entertaining the public would have that sort of practiced dulcet cadence as if he were filming an online vlog about his daily workout routine instead of talking to another human being.

“….Don’t really need any of that,” Lysander was saying, his radiant smile focused on the woman with a clipboard standing before him with a look of intense concentration on her face. The blonde had green eyes—unusual. Probably contacts. “Just some water, and maybe, I don’t know…Skittles?”

“Skittles, got it,” the woman said, head bobbing as she wrote down notes as if he were passing on commandments from God. “Any particular color?”

Lysander’s brows drew together at that and he loosed a faintly confused laugh. “No, anything is fine. Or a Jolly Rancher, if that’s easier. Just something sugary and non-dairy.” He winked—actually winked—as he added, “Something to keep my energy up between songs, you know?”

Acid twisted in Theo’s stomach as he tried not to glare at the flashy celebrity. God was he fake.

The entourage was gathered close enough to the edge of the stage that a few members within it were partially blocking the short stairwell Theo needed to ascend to reach the sound equipment. He stopped at the bottom of the stairwell with one hand on the railing and heaved a sigh, debating whether he should just wait for them to eventually clear or make his way forcibly through the crowd.  While still deciding which tactic to enact, Theo blinked as the pop star’s gaze suddenly swept towards him, and for a split second his heart skipped a beat.

Lysander was staring at him—something indefinable shined in the emerald depths of the singer’s slightly widened eyes, and for mere seconds the singer’s polite smile froze in place. Then suddenly he burst into an ear-splitting grin that didn’t seem like it should be humanly possible, but somehow the blonde pulled it off. Theo felt his throat work in a dry swallow and almost took a step backwards, ill-prepared for the force of that luminous smile.

“James,” Lysander said without taking his eyes off Theo, and one of the men who was lingering near the top of the stairwell jerked his head up attentively. “Could you step to your right? I think you’re blocking our friend there from climbing the stairs.”

At once, about seven pairs of eyes locked on Theo in unison, and his throat worked even harder as he really did take a step back. “Uh—n-no, i-it’s fine,” he mumbled automatically, shrinking another step backwards until his hand fell away from the railing to clench lightly at his side. “I can—I c-can just climb up the s-side—”

“No, no, don’t be silly. We can move.” With a sweeping gesture of his arm as if he were parting the Red Sea, Lysander signaled his entourage to dutifully step to the side, clearing the way. Only the pop star remained in his path, still beaming down at him from the top of the stairs while Theo briefly tried to recall what his own name was. “What can I help you with, friend?”

He’d said it again—‘friend’. Did he mean Theo? Theo’s brow puckered at that, unsettled by the unexpected familiarity from a total stranger, and a famous celebrity to boot. He supposed he ought to be offended at the presumptuousness of it, but mostly he just felt confused. Wasn’t that a Southern thing? But as far as he knew, Lysander was born and raised in Los Angeles, unlike the poor, ignorant midwestern boy that Theo was…

Catching the six other sets of eyes still staring at him within his peripheral, Theo recalled what his task was with another blink. “Oh…I-I’m just doing s-sound check,” he mumbled, almost too quiet for his voice to carry even that short distance, and belatedly he forced his legs to move, climbing the stairs one awkward step at a time.

Although he loved making music, and could endure DJing on stage as long as the room was dark and not too crowded, Theo hated to be the center of attention—hated to feel like he was being judged, evaluated, as if he was standing on display. It made working at the concert venue especially ironic—he interacted with the sorts of people who thrived on attention every day, and it only reinforced his distaste for it. Lysander, too, must have thrived on it, or he wouldn’t have gotten as famous doing large-scale stage performances as he had.

As Theo neared the top of the stage, Lysander finally stepped back to make space for him, though the singer’s gaze still hadn’t left Theo’s face. For his part, Theo dropped his stare to the ground as fast as humanly possible, using the shadows cast by the house lights to guide him past the celebrity and other members of his entourage until Theo had passed by the lot of them and reached the sound equipment at the back of the stage. Even once he’d moved beyond the group, Theo thought he could feel the singer’s stare boring into the back of his neck…though he could have been imagining it.

What the hell was the pop star’s problem with him? It hadn’t been an unpleasant smile, but still—surely Lysander didn’t often smile that intensely at other people or there’d be a lot more reports of unconscious swooning from audience members in the tabloids.

A short time after he’d crossed the stage, the sounds of conversation started up behind him again, and Theo loosed a soft breath of relief. He began testing cords and dials, making sure everything had power and nothing was cranked up too high or placed in a way that would cause feedback. Though Lysander was billed as a solo artist, he still had a back-up band, their equipment already set up along the back row of the stage by sound techs that had arrived ahead of the singer himself hours prior. Resting in the center, halfway towards the front, was the electric guitar the singer had selected for tonight’s show—pastel pink and white, covered in shiny silver star stickers.

At the start of his “career”—who could really say when a nepobaby in entertainment truly debuted—Lysander Delion had presented himself in a more traditionally male pop star aesthetic. However it seemed that in more recent years he’d really been pushing the envelope on what was considered “masculine,” and the predominantly queer or queer-curious zoomers in his fanbase ate it up.

After he’d seen what the singer looked like, distant memories of tabloid and magazine covers that he’d glanced at while waiting in line at the grocery store floated to mind—whenever it came to awards shows, for instance, no one seemed to know if Lysander would show up in a conservative matte blue tuxedo or flaming red sequined leggings and vest. Theo spent plenty of time on his own appearance before heading to raves or anywhere he would be expected to “dress up,” and even he thought Lysander’s fashion choices were rather over-the-top.

However, that wasn’t his primary concern with the ambiguously-gendered guitar at the moment. His only focus was on making sure the damn thing was set up to sound correctly when the show started so Jim couldn’t blame him if something went wrong. And thanks to His Highness showing up so late, they had less than an hour to make sure that it was.

A flicker of irritation at the reason they were so behind passed through Theo’s expression as he lifted his gaze to the blonde, now standing with his back towards Theo as he continued to address his entourage. Now Jim was there as well, eyeing the celebrity with a grin that could only be defined as hungry—he was going to make a killing off ticket sales tonight.

“Um—” Theo hesitated, loathe to attract eyeballs back onto him but needing to get the singer’s attention so they could get the sound check done on time. “Lys—er, M-Mr. Delion, c-can you come here please? We need to ch-check sound.”

“Oh!” Pausing in his conversation immediately, Lysander whirled around and faced Theo with an apologetic smile. “Sound check. I forgot. Sure.” The blonde strode towards him, and Theo couldn’t stop himself from automatically taking a step back as the singer swept down to fetch the guitar from where it lay on the stage. As he rose, Lysander flashed a look through long lashes towards Theo, his smile turning ever so slightly sultry as he said, “By the way, ‘Mr. Delion’ is my father. Please feel free to just call me Lysander.”

Something annoyingly similar to butterflies fluttered to life in Theo’s stomach as he nodded stiffly, then turned his gaze determinedly towards the guitar, doing his best to ignore the ring-studded fingers that rested about the neck. A moment later, those fingers strummed softly, and a beautiful—but slightly too quiet—sound of strings vibrated across the open space. “How’s this?” the pop star asked, his voice as melodic as the musical instrument.

Butterflies or no, Theo went into work-mode, putting his distractions aside so he could get the job done. He wouldn’t be able to determine how the instruments sounded to the audience until he was standing in the mixer booth at the center of the room, but he could already tell it was too quiet. He needed to check the other equipment sound levels as well—steeling himself with a quick intake of breath before he dared to look directly at the radiant celebrity, he asked in a perfunctory voice that sounded a lot calmer than he felt, “C-can your bandmates also take up p-positions? And…” Swallowing a grimace, he used the politest yet still urgent voice he could summon to add, “P-please hurry. Doors are supposed to open in t-twenty minutes.”

The singer’s eyes flew wide at that, and for just a second he almost looked like a real person, not something printed out at the “pop idol” factory. “Shit!” he breathed, then with another apologetic smile he called to his bandmates, prompting them to make their way to their stations.

Apparently the urgency in Theo’s tone worked, because the singer and other performers stayed on task as Theo and the other techs worked with them to get all the levels up to snuff. They still went another twenty minutes over doors’ opening time, but that was at least within the parameters of a fairly average delay—just in the period that he’d worked at Halo, Theo could count the number of sold-out shows that actually started on time on one hand.

As the hour of impact drew close and Theo felt relatively assured that all was correctly prepared, he dropped down from the mixer booth in the center of the dance floor to make his way to the bathroom for a lighting quick piss-and-spritz. There were two bathrooms in the small venue, one near the box office for attendees and one backstage for the performers, but the one backstage was closer to the sound booth so he started heading that way, keeping his steps light as the lateness of the hour pressed against his nerves.

Theo had barely made it two strides past the curtain before he felt a presence settle in next to him, and he almost did a double-take upon turning to find that the headliner of the sold-out show was keeping pace with him, once more regarding him with a beaming smile. Theo had managed to quell the butterflies while he had a specific job to do, but now as they power-walked temporarily alone together through the backstage hallways, the butterflies had returned, apparently now double in number.

Maybe he’d had too many energy drinks that day, and he was just getting acid reflux. Yes, that was definitely it—no way was he falling for the charismatic celebrity’s charms like every other idiot.

“What’s your name, anyway?” Lysander asked while Theo tried unsuccessfully to walk too fast for the blonde to keep pace without Theo bursting into an outright run.

Theo’s brow furrowed at the question, once more confused by the disproportionate amount of attention the celebrity was paying towards him. Yet it seemed a simple enough thing to answer so he mumbled, “Theo,” right before placing his hand on the door leading to the backstage men’s bathroom and shoving it open.

To his dismay, Lysander continued to follow in his footsteps even into the bathroom, though he’d only smiled without saying anything after Theo had offered his name. Maybe the celebrity had to take a leak also—it was the most logical explanation, but as Theo cast a glance towards the three urinals lined up together with only a thin partition of wall between them that barely stretched from collarbone to groin, he couldn’t help but feel a little off-put at the idea of standing only a couple feet away from the celebrity with his dick out. So he made his way to the lone stall instead, immediately locking it but then only sitting on the seat with his pants still pulled up, struggling to control his bizarrely rapid heartbeat.

Shit. Maybe he was having a heart attack. Maybe all those energy drinks he’d been pounding almost nightly—the only way he’d been able to survive working at the warehouse from four AM to noon, try his best to take a catnap, then work at the concert hall from six PM to two in the morning—were finally catching up to him.

Thank God the singer didn’t try to talk to him more even while he was in the bathroom stall—after a few seconds longer, he heard the sound of the urinal being used, then the sink, then the soft click of the outside door closing. Only then did he feel safe enough doing his own business, though he couldn’t help jumping at every sound as if the celebrity were about to burst into the room again at any moment. If Lysander did—then Theo might scream. Or call the cops, famous celebrity or not.

His nerves were still jittery even as he rushed his way back to the mixer’s booth, though blessedly Lysander was getting into position on the stage not lying in wait to accost Theo as soon as he exited the bathroom. Theo couldn’t help flickering his eyes stage-ward as he crossed through the dance floor towards the booth, but the singer had his attentions on his bandmates so Theo managed to make it into position with no further awkward conversation or heart-stammering green-eyed stares.

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