Louis hadn’t been particularly keen on being a part of the casting process. He didn’t like to see the initial auditions because it always gave him expectations about what they would be like during the screen test. He felt it was better to let their natural chemistry take over on camera for an accurate gauge of what filming would be like. Readings just didn’t give the same dramatic atmosphere.

Besides, it wasn’t like it mattered who they cast. Louis would perform to the best of his ability regardless of whom he was acting opposite. It wouldn’t be the first time he hated a costar and the experience wasn’t likely to be enjoyable even if they found the perfect Marcus Lazarus.

But after Louis had made it through nine sub-par auditions, he had been almost excited for the last one. It was going to be David Benton, the most promising of the video auditions, despite having acted on Lust Story. Louis only hoped that he was better in person than on tape. As Rosemarie said, he needed to give them all a chance. Of course, he didn’t have much of a choice seeing as they were getting perilously close to the beginning of filming and no one wanted to push the schedule back any further than it already was.

He shouldn't have gotten his hopes up.

David had come in bright-eyed and smiling. He looked completely at ease with himself as he greeted Nabila and, for a moment, Louis had found himself taken aback by those eyes, so blue they didn't seem real. But the look that came over his face when he had spotted Louis was one of—there was really no other word for it—horror.

It threw Louis off his game and he thought he might have returned the look with a frown, but he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t usually rude right off the bat, but Louis didn’t think that his mere presence was horrifying. Louis knew that he had his critics, but this was ridiculous.

Was it because he was gay? It wasn't a well-known fact, but it wasn't exactly a secret, either. If you dug far enough into the archives of his appearances, it came up on occasion, usually in passing or semi-veiled references.

Once they actually began to read lines, the audition turned into something so bafflingly terrible that Louis was surprised that Benton had ever gotten a role at all, even on a show as terrible as Lust Story. And then he’d just left half way through.

Nabila looked almost as furious as Louis felt. The lack of professionalism rubbed him the wrong way. The least he could have done was to show them and their time some respect.

“Not him,” was all Louis said. Nabila nodded emphatically.

“Two was my favorite,” she said, though the words sounded forced. Louis leaned back in his chair, feeling the anxious prickle of anger over the last audition.

Louis nodded slowly. “Have you gotten any more auditions?”

“Not any decent ones,” Nabila said. “Did you see any that you thought you’d work well with?”

Louis shrugged. “I’m more concerned with their performance.”

“We’ll keep looking,” Nabila said with a sigh. “Thank you for coming in today, I'll keep you posted.”

“Of course,” Louis said, shaking her hand with a smile before leaving the building.

Monday was going to be hard. Without a Marcus Lazarus, they would have to film around the absence by re-organizing the scenes, but they were on a tight schedule and had to get most of the scenes done before the melting snow changed the scenery too much.

*****

Monday was hell.

Everyone was a little off kilter because of the sudden scheduling shift, but Louis was probably the most frustrated of all. They were trying to get around some of the road blocks with camera tricks but it was hard to react to a person when they not only weren't there, but didn't even exist in your mental catalogue.

Even when the scene didn’t actually include Lazarus, Don still had an emotional reaction to the man and what he represented. Without understanding the subtleties of his character, Louis could only guess at the appropriate emotions. By lunch, Louis was about ready to explode. He hated this job more than anything he’d ever taken part in and he wasn’t even being paid well for it.

Louis was one of the last people to the cafeteria after a quick costume change to be ready for the next scene in twenty minutes. The cafeteria was almost empty, though, which Louis counted as a plus, even if he was getting even more surly due to lack of sustenance. He got himself a chicken salad and sat down at one of the benches.

He had figured that this was going to be a long year, but he hadn’t anticipated quite how draining it would be. It was only the first day and he was already wound so tight he thought he might snap.

Louis shifted in his seat then glanced down when something rustled against his thigh. There was a piece of notebook paper sitting on the bench, the edge ripped jaggedly from a notebook that wasn't intended to part with its pages.

Louis set down his fork and picked it up, glancing over it to make sure it wasn’t anything important someone had left lying around. It wasn’t, but something else caught his eye. The sheet was titled “Atlas and the King.”

He felt a twinge of déjà vu and his curiosity got the better of his judgment, even as he chastised himself for the invasion of privacy.

It seemed to be a half-finished poem—lyrics, his mind supplied, though he had not way of knowing if that was the intention—about a moth and a bird. It wasn’t that it was so strange to find a poem, but it was very strange to find this particular poem. It was like he’d read it before, but couldn’t remember when or why. Louis pocketed the paper with the intention of looking it up the next time he was at his computer.

During afternoon break, Louis ended up pulling out his phone to search for the poem. Only he couldn’t find anything even remotely close to the poem. The Atlas moth looked familiar. He'd probably seen it on a nature documentary at some point, but there weren't any songs or poems about atlas moths in the results.

Putting his phone down in frustration, he pulled the poem out of his pocket and read over it again. There was no author or indication about who wrote it, but Louis's curiosity was at a full burn now. He had to know who wrote it. Maybe Nabila knew if one of her crew was a poet.

“Where did you get that?” a sharp voice demanded. Louis jumped, shoving the paper guiltily behind his back as though he'd been caught passing notes in class.

Jennifer Yang, the special effects manager, looked up at him almost menacingly

“That is not for you.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, cautiously.

Ms. Yang gave him a long look and holding her red-clawed hand out flat for the paper. “I know it doesn’t belong to you, hand it over.”

“You know who wrote this?” Louis asked then, pulling the paper back out, though keeping it just out of easy reach. As long as he was already caught, he might as well try to get more information.

Ms. Yang shrugged sagely, giving him the stink-eye, though he couldn’t understand why. They’d been amiable up to this moment. He wondered if it might be hers, but he somehow doubted it. He just couldn't imagine Jennifer Yang writing poetry about moths.

“Yes," she said. “May I have it back, please?”

"Is it yours?" Louis asked.

"No, but I know the owner," she said.

"Who?"

"It's none of your business."

Louis raised an eyebrow. "Is it that much of a secret? I'll return it to the owner if you tell me who it is."

Jennifer pursed her lips, hand still extended. "Hand it over."

“No,” Louis said, pocketing the paper.

“That’s theft,” she said.

It was almost impossible to stop himself from rolling his eyes. “Theft of a piece of paper? I already said I'd return it if you told me who it belongs to. How do I know it’s yours or that you know who it belongs to?”

“Because I know it’s about a bird and a moth,” she said. Louis's lips tightened. That pretty much proved she’d read the poem, but he wasn’t ready to hand it over yet.

“Just tell me who wrote it and I’ll return it,” Louis insisted. Ms. Yang frowned, eyeing him as though weighing his worth as a person.

“Why do you want to know?”

That gave Louis a moment’s pause. Why did he want to know? It wasn’t like this was an awe-inspiring piece of poetry or anything, it was just annoyingly familiar and he wanted to know why.

“Curiosity,” he said. “I’m not angling for anything. I only want to know who wrote it.”

“That’s not an acceptable answer.”

Louis huffed, losing patience. “Look, I like it and want to know who wrote it. Is that so wrong?”

“It’s wrong of you to have read it in the first place,” she said. “He doesn’t need you making everything worse. Hand it over.”

“What?” Louis asked, completely lost at this point.

Ms. Yang had this way about her that, even though she looked like a preschool teacher, made you feel like you were in trouble. Maybe it was that she made you feel like a preschooler.

“He’s not a world-class musician, but he’s a good actor. Better than you, actually,” she said giving him a significant look. Louis didn’t know when this turned from trying to get the identity of a poet to a critique on his acting, but he didn’t particularly appreciate it.

“So he’s one of the actors? Is he someone who auditioned?” Louis guessed. Though, if that was the case, Louis was even more affronted by that assertion.

“I didn’t say it was a he,” Ms. Yang said.

“Yes, you—” Louis began, though she’d said it with such conviction, that he wasn’t sure anymore. “Who wrote it, then?”

Jennifer studied him with narrowed eyes before saying icily, “It’s your fault that he screwed up anyway. You wrote him a very mean letter at a very impressionable age."

Louis was pretty sure she was fishing for something now because she was winding him in circles and he still had no fucking clue what she hoped to find out. Louis couldn’t even remember the last time he wrote a letter let alone sent one.

“What are you talking about?”

“He was only five,” she said, “and you told him that his lyrics sucked.”

Five? He didn't think that there was anyone that young in the cast. Unless it was years ago? And then it clicked.

“But if you go watch The Wake of War," Jennifer continued, "you’ll see what I mean. And after that, you’ll give him a second chance.”

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Louis just stared for a moment. “I’m not in charge of casting,” he said, “and I can’t be bribed, even if I was.”

Ms. Yang gave him a condescending pat on the arm, then walked away, seeming to have forgotten about the poem clutched in Louis's hand. What were the odds, after all these years, that he'd run into this poem again? This song.

Louis folded the paper neatly and tucked it away again.

*****

The letter burned in Louis's pocket for the rest of the day and as soon as he got back to Rosemarie’s place, he kissed her on the cheek then ran up to the attic where she kept all of the old photo albums and lists of accomplishments throughout his career. It was a bit tacky, but he appreciated it now in a way he never had before. He was almost certain that it would be here.

He was half way through the last box when Rosemarie shuffled up the ladder. She perched gingerly on the edge of the trap door and Louis spared a moment of concern for her. It must be a bad day today.

“What are you looking for?” she asked. Louis let out a breath, trying not to let it show just how disappointed he was not to find the letter in this mass of junk.

“Just a letter,” he said. “I was hoping that you’d kept it.”

Louis didn’t know now how he had forgotten it. It wasn’t like he had obsessed over it, but he kept it all through his time in Starfly. Had it really been so long since he read it that he couldn’t put two and two together without Ms. Yang’s help?

It was the only reason he kept on with Starfly, even after his dad died and Rosemarie became his primary guardian, even after the public criticism and the difficulties on set. He didn’t remember what he’d said in response to it, but he didn't have a hard time believing Ms. Yang's assessment of it being "very mean." He had not been a very tactful child.

“The one from your little fan?” she asked, smiling fondly. Louis's head snapped up.

“You remember it? Do you still have it?” he asked hopefully. She nodded, then gestured him back down the ladder. Louis closed the boxes and returned the attic to its normal state before following her.

“I keep my favorite bits of memorabilia in the bookshelf,” she said, “you know that.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think that you kept my fan mail in there,” he said.

“It’s less that it’s your fan mail and more that it’s fan mail from a five-year-old. It was some of the first you ever got, too. I think it was sweet. He wrote you a song!”

“I think I wrote something awful back,” he said, flushing slightly. Rosemarie gave him that long-suffering but fond look she got when he admitted he’d done something wrong.

“You were only seven,” she said. “And you were always a very serious child.”

Louis shrugged, he couldn’t deny that. He was still pretty serious, he thought. He didn’t do casual emotiveness well, especially not with strangers.

“Here,” Rosemarie said, pulling out a thick album with a paisley cover and his name written in Rosemarie’s neat handwriting. Looking at it, Louis was suddenly overcome with an overwhelming fondness for his sister. He stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders pressing a kiss to her cheek as she opened the album.

Rosemarie laughed. “I didn’t know you’d be that grateful that I kept all of your embarrassing moments for posterity,” she teased.

Louis laughed. “I love you.”

“Love you too, Lou,” she said, reaching back to pat his head.

“I know,” he said, finally releasing her so they could go sit on the couch and look through the album.

They laughed at a couple of the pictures of Louis pouting or crying on the set of Starfly. It was strange to see now, but he had been so small when he started out there. He’d been the son of the famous Jason and Crystal Greene, and his parents had wanted one of their children to carry on their legacy.

Rosemarie had flat out refused after the age of ten to do it—or so Louis had been told—and it had been forced upon Louis. But unlike Rosemarie, Louis had embraced it. For all his crying and complaining, he had loved it. He had loved it against all odds. He remembered being proud of the things he created and about being part of something bigger than just himself.

“Here it is,” she said, flipping to a page about three quarters of the way through the album. Louis touched the yellowed piece of printer paper. The words were written in large, childish hand, but clearly legible, which Louis thought was pretty impressive for a five-year-old.

“Attacus atlas,” Louis muttered.

“It’s a type of moth,” she said. “I had to look it up.”

Louis chuckled. “I know, so did I. What does a five-year-old know about moths? And this was before the internet.”

“Apparently the same kind whose parents let him watch Starfly,” she said. “My lord, it never occurred to me what exactly went on in that show until I re-watched it.”

“I was fifteen before you let me watch it,” Louis pointed out.

Rosemarie laughed. “I’d forgotten that.”

“Not that I mind,” Louis said. “I still can’t watch anything I'm in.”

“You shouldn’t be embarrassed about your acting,” she said. “You’re wonderful.”

“Apparently not as wonderful as moth-boy, though,” Louis said. “His friend chewed me out about this letter. I guess he tried out.”

Rosemarie frowned. “Oh? Who was it?”

“I don’t know,” he said, looking over the letter. “It's signed Davie Truman, but no one by that name auditioned.”

Rosemarie frowned. “You said David Benton from Lust Story auditioned! He could have been a Davie.”

“Yeah, but his name isn’t David Truman," Louis said, grimacing. "He was awful, too. It pisses me off just thinking about it.”

“Language,” Rosemarie scolded. “Benton might be a stage name. Maybe he was having a bad day. Were there any other Davids there?”

“No. Just Benton. And if that is the same Davie, I’m not sure why Ms. Yang thinks he deserves a second chance,” Louis said.

He pulled the second set of lyrics out of his pocket and his heart gave a thump that resonated through his chest. Could it be the same David? And what did it matter if they were the same or not? Was it such a crime to be a bad actor?

Louis felt a little ashamed of his judgment, even as he wondered if there was a way to engineer a meeting with him. Even if he was in charge of casting, which he most assuredly wasn't, he wouldn’t go so far as to give a role to someone who didn't deserve it—he had more professionalism than that—but he desperately wondered what kind of person this kid had grown into.

“She said to watch The Wake of War. I guess he’s in it,” he said slowly.

“Oh, I know that one!” she said. “I don’t remember David Benton being in it, though.”

“Does it have vampires?” he asked with a sigh. She laughed.

“No, it’s a historical drama,” she said. “It was pretty good, but I don’t think you’ll like it.”

“Why not?” he asked, indignant. She gave him a patronizing look.

“It’s historically inaccurate and it’s a romance,” she said. “I know how you feel about anything where people kiss.”

“It’s not the kissing that I find repulsive, it’s the lack of realism,” he said. “Do you have it?”

Rosemarie frowned, then went into her bedroom to search through a case of DVDs that they probably hadn’t opened since the advent of video streaming. When she returned, though, it was with a successful whoop.

“Watch with me?” Louis asked. “We can order pizza for dinner. I’d say Chinese, but I don’t want to go pick it up in the city.”

“All right,” she said, popping the disk in.

As promised, the movie was both a romance and—painfully—historically inaccurate, but for all that, Louis could see the merit in the storytelling and production value. It wasn’t something he’d watch again, certainly, but he didn’t hate it.

“Pretty good, right?” Rosemarie asked.

“Yeah, I guess,” he said, “but I didn’t recognize anyone in there.” He was surprised at his disappointment over that. He had been hoping that someone would jump out at him. He’d even been keeping his eye out for David Benton. Maybe Davie had changed his first name. Louis didn’t recall a Truman showing up for the auditions, either, though.

“Well, let’s look up the cast list, then,” Rosemarie said, pulling out her phone to check online. “Maybe you’ll recognize the names.”

“Oh,” she said, pausing after a moment’s scrolling.

“What?”

“It was him! David Benton,” she said. “He was the little soldier, Morgan Wittemore. I didn’t even recognize him with that hair.”

“Bullshit,” Louis said, grabbing for her phone.

“Language,” Rosemarie warned, handing the phone to him anyway.

Sure enough, David Benton was Morgan Wittemore, though his hair was dyed black and either he wore contacts to the audition this morning or he was wearing them in the movie, because the thing Louis remembered most clearly about him was how strikingly blue his eyes were.

Staring at the photos, though, he could definitely see that it was him. Younger, certainly, but recognizable if you knew who you were looking at.

“He was actually very good. Not as good as you, but still good,” Rosemarie said. “I don’t think I’ve see him in anything else. He has a lot of commercials, modeling, and a couple side roles listed, but this is the only notable film he’s been in.”

“Hmm. This was made when he was, what, seventeen?” Louis asked, doing some quick mental math. “It says he’d only been active since the year before.”

“You sound impressed,” she said, smiling. “Thinking of casting your vote?”

“I’m only surprised because he gave the worst audition that I’ve ever witnessed. He walked out half way through,” Louis said dryly.

It was truly a terrible audition, but after watching him in this, Louis couldn’t help but wonder if maybe there was more in him than just the one role. Allowing for bias, Ms. Yang’s insistence, too, made him curious to see what would happen. But was he curious enough to waste Nabila's time—let alone valuable filming time—if The Wake of War was just a fluke and he really was as bad as he had been at the auditions?

“It’s intriguing at the very least,” Rosemarie said. “If you still haven't found your Marcus Lazarus, maybe you should ask Nabila to give him another try.”

“Ms. Yang did say that his performance at the audition was my fault,” Louis admitted. “Apparently he’s still holding a grudge about the letter I sent.”

Rosemarie’s eyes went wide and she let out a delightful laugh. “Is that what sparked this? What on Earth did you write to that poor boy? Oh, Lou, only you could turn your smallest fan into an antagonist with one letter. I guess I never taught you tact.”

“You have to have tact to teach it,” Louis bit back, though it was mostly in jest. Rosemarie ruffled his hair.

“It's really the same Davie?” Rosemarie mused, tilting her head. “What a small world.”

“I found a poem on set—lyrics, maybe—about an Atlas moth being eaten by a kingfisher,” Louis said. “I guess he's a friend of Ms. Yang's. She didn’t name him outright, but she told me to go watch the movie. And that he's a better actor than I am.”

Rosemarie pursed her lips in a show of sisterly pride. “I don’t know about that, but you should talk to him. Make friends or something.”

Louis cocked an eyebrow at her. “I’m not in kindergarten.”

Rosemarie just looked at him, eyes turning sad.

“Maybe not, but you need more friends, Lou.” The implied, because I’m not going to be here forever, hung heavy in the air. Louis leaned back on the couch, handing her phone back to her and wrapping an arm over her shoulders. Rosemarie took it, scrolling up and down the page for a moment before she snickered at something.

“He has a quote about you,” she said. Louis looked over. “He says that you’re the actor he’d most like to work with. I guess he's still a fan after all.”

“That’s just weird,” Louis said to mask the way his heart was pounding in his chest. “Besides, he looked more disgusted than excited to see me this morning.”

“You were probably doing that thing with your eyebrows that makes you look like you’re plotting murder,” she said, running a thumb over the furrow in said brows. “Yes, that one.”

“I’ll talk to Nabila,” Louis said after a long moment during which Rosemarie stared him down in a way that was probably trying to convey that he should play nice and go make friends.

*****

“Nabila, I have a favor to ask,” Louis said the next morning. She looked at him expectantly and Louis tried to think of a reasonable way to ask. “I’d like to review the tapes again.” It wasn’t quite what he wanted, but that was somewhere to start.

“All of them, or just the final list,” she asked. Louis hesitated for a moment.

“The same ones we watched last Tuesday.”

“All right, they’re in the back. Want me to watch with you?” she asked.

Louis wanted to refuse, but he was pretty sure it would be easier to convince her if her last impression of David wasn’t him stuttering as he walked out the door half way through the reading. Not that Louis was entirely sure he wanted to give David another chance either, but his gut feeling was that he needed to at least check out the resources at his disposal. He'd even pulled up a couple episodes of Lust Story, just to see what David was like in that context.

“All right. Do you have a moment during lunch?”

*****

When Louis finally made it to the viewing room after a chaotic morning of filming, Nabila was already waiting with the auditions queued up. Louis took a seat in the chair next to her and took out a pad and paper, intent on analyzing all of them, just to be sure that he was being objective about his assessment.

None of them had improved with time.

“David Benton’s is still the strongest audition,” he said slowly. “But he really... Didn’t hit the mark on the in-person audition.”

Nabila snorted. “To put it mildly.”

“What do you think about giving him a second chance?” Louis said.

“Why?” Nabila asked, watching him critically. It was true that there was no rational reason to give him a second chance. But Louis just had a feeling.

“Because I watched a movie last night,” Louis started carefully. “The Wake of War. He was in it and he was good. Not just good, he was very good.”

“That could have been a fluke,” she pointed out. “He’s made two terrible impressions on me so far, once with Lust Story and once in person, then one mediocre impression with this tape.”

"You watched Lust Story?" Louis couldn't help but ask, then shook his head. "Never mind. My impression of him wasn't strong, either, but I had a conversation with Jennifer Yang yesterday, too."

“Jennifer?” Nabila asked, her curiosity seemingly piqued.

“You know her, then?”

“Of course I know her, I know the heads of all the departments working on this production.”

“Would you agree that she's pretty straight forward? Objective, even?” he asked.

Nabila nodded.

"She knows David Benton," he said, not sure if that information would sway in David's favor or not, "but she told me to watch The Wake of War and said that David Benton was actually a good actor if I—you, really—would give him a second chance."

"I can't cast a role based on liking an actor's friend," Nabila said, her expression close to being disappointed in him.

Louis shook his head quickly. "That's not what I'm asking, it's not what I want, either. But you are short on time and options and after watching The Wake of War, I could see that there was at least potential there. I've been wondering since then if the audition might have been the fluke. I'll defer to your judgement, of course, but what’s the harm in calling him in one more time?”

“We’re running out of time, that’s what,” she said.

“Then call him in for the screen test with the other two options,” he said. “It might be a waste of five minutes, but we're grasping at straws and if he can pull off another performance like The Wake of War...”

“I'm beginning to believe those rumors that this production is cursed,” Nabila muttered, rubbing a finger over her temple.

Louis hummed in sympathetic agreement. “Like you said, we’re out of time. If he’s still awful, we just hire one of the other two. But if he’s not...”

Nabila sighed, but nodded. “Jennifer Yang has always been sensible and honest in the past. And so have you. If you honestly think that he's worth another shot, I’ll give him another chance.”

“I’d say you won’t regret it, but honestly I’m not sure,” Louis said, quirking an eyebrow at her.

Nabila laughed, but it was settled.

Louis tried to ignore the nervous energy settling in his stomach as he thought of those blue eyes again and the letter tucked safely away in his bedside table at home.