Chapter 9 – Audition Room Weather
The audition room was always colder than the hallway, as if the building itself understood that nerves run hot and wanted to be helpful. Fluorescents hummed like insects. Tape X's on the scuffed floor marked where futures were supposed to stand. A folding table held headshots and water bottles, half of them sweating. On the wall, a hand-lettered sign in thick black marker read: NO SELF-TAPES TODAY. IN-PERSON ONLY. Someone had drawn a small star in the corner. Someone else had circled it twice.
Ivar Teller rolled a pen between his fingers and felt the storm gather.
He'd been in rooms like this before—on the other side, as a kid watching Jax read lines for a community theater that needed a warm body in a leather jacket—but never from the seat that decided whether a name was about to become a headline. Louise sat beside him, not quite touching, a notebook open to a page divided neatly into columns: Presence, Truth, Cost of Belief. She'd invented the last column the night before and refused to explain it. He didn't need her to.
"Ready?" the casting director asked. She had a voice like a bird that had learned to live inside an engine.
"Send him in," Ivar said.
The door opened and the first Spider-Man walked in—a boy with hair that hadn't decided which direction it wanted to grow, sneakers scuffed white, nervous smile doing sit-ups. He stood on the X like it had taught him to stand his whole life and breathed like someone had counted to three for him.
"Slate and sides," the casting director said.
He slates. He reads. He's funny in the way a student becomes funny to survive hallways. The jokes come quick—defense mechanism velocity—but the eyes are wrong. They're empty of the city. Ivar feels it immediately, that absence, the way a mechanic can feel a misfire through the seat before a check-engine light ever blinks.
"Thank you," Louise says, and the boy nods, hopeful bleeding through professionalism.
When he leaves, Ivar writes a small, brutal note at the edge of his page: Jokes landed; nothing behind them. He taps the pen against the table.
"Next," the casting director calls.
Spider-Men parade. A dozen boys with a dozen ways to pretend gravity doesn't apply to them. Some have gymnastic reels that make the room clap against its will. Some have grins that could sell cereal to cynics. A few have eyes that know a corner you can't teach someone about. One has all three and the room tips forward without anyone telling it to, like a wave following the moon.
He trips on the threshold when he comes in. Catches himself with a reflex that turns the near-fall into a dance. He laughs at himself and the sound is bright, not practiced. His shoes are too clean. His hoodie is too big. His eyes—
There it is. Queens. A little bit of rain that never really dries. Curiosity standing on its toes.
"Whenever you're ready," Louise says, voice soft enough to coax truth.
He starts. The first beat is a babble—words tumbling over each other like kids racing downhill—but in the middle, when the sides demand he choose between saving a stranger and making it to class on time, the babble quiets. He looks up, not at them but through them, and Ivar sees it, the thing he's been waiting for: a boy measuring himself against a city and deciding he's small and going to try anyway.
"Thank you," Ivar says, and means it. The boy nods and leaves, and the room knows it will see him again.
Louise writes YES in her Truth column and underlines it twice. In Cost of Belief she writes: He'll break himself for them if we aren't careful.
The door opens again before the casting director can call for Iron Man, and a producer slides inside like a knife that learned to walk. He's not theirs, not really; he belongs to a partner studio and the smell of last decade's money. His suit is navy because of course it is. His smile is a dead fish that learned to tango.
"Sorry I'm late," he says, not sorry at all. He deposits himself in a chair with the quiet entitlement of furniture. "Just want to keep an eye on the process. We've got, you know, guardrails."
Louise doesn't look at him. "Grip your guardrails," she says, and flips to the Iron Man sides.
The first two Tonys are a disaster—one smirks like a yacht salesman, one winks like a man who thinks the camera is a mirror. Neither can make the engineering jargon sound like it grew in their mouth. Then the third walks in and does it—arrogance like a second skin, yes, but a tiredness on the edges of it, as if charm is something he puts on in the morning because the world expects it and his bones want him to find a quieter shirt.
He reads the cave scene. The moment where a genius realizes a heart can be a battery or a promise. He doesn't make the obvious choices. He laughs once—short, unbelieving—and then goes silent for a breath too long. The silence says more than the line ever could.
Louise stops writing halfway through and just watches.
The producer tilts his head, calculating attributes like a man appraising livestock. When the actor leaves, he leans toward Ivar. "He's…volatile."
"Alive," Ivar says.
"Insurance will hate him."
"Insurance isn't invited to set."
The producer grins in a way that shows expensive dentistry and no humor. "Be reasonable, Teller. You're building something big. You need anchors. Predictability. The bankable boys."
Ivar turns his head slowly, green eyes calm in that particular way that makes rooms shift weight. "Bankable boys don't build a heart in a cave," he says. "They hire a plumber."
The producer laughs as if a joke happened and he is gracious enough to recognize it. "It's your circus," he says. "Just don't feed the lions people we need later."
Louise sets her pen down and finally looks at him. "If you say 'we' again like you own the word," she says lightly, "I'll invoice you for pronouns."
The room inhales. The producer's smile calcifies. "Noted," he says, and checks his phone like it owes him money.
Rogue auditions begin after lunch. Ivar feels it in his blood, the way a barometer can feel a storm without seeing clouds. He doesn't say anything to Louise that he hasn't already said—this is work, this is truth, you will earn it and I will fight for you—but when the first woman steps on the X with a white streak painted in her hair by an overconfident makeup artist, something ancient in him bare his teeth.
They see six Rogues. Two are good in the way good can be the enemy of the right. They say sugar like they're trying on a costume. One is a miracle for exactly twelve seconds and then turns into someone else entirely. One is wrong from the first inhale and somehow gets worse. One—fifth—cracks the room open with a laugh that sounds like a bruise learned to sing. She's dangerous, and the camera loves her back, and Louise watches with an expression that is two degrees off neutral and therefore terrifying to anyone who knows her.
After the fifth leaves, Ivar leans in. "Do you want to go?" he asks quietly.
"No," she says. "I want to work."
He nods.
When it's her turn, she doesn't ask for the room to clear. She doesn't apologize to the actors who came before, who will come after. She steps onto the X like a woman stepping onto a ship she intends to sail into a storm. She closes her eyes once—as if checking a lock—and opens them on fire.
The first scene is small: a conversation at a table, hands near but not touching. The air carries consequence like a scent. She makes it funny where most would go sad. She makes it tender where most would go steel. When the scene turns and the thing Rogue can't have tries to have her anyway—a brush of skin that means pain—Louise flinches before she performs the flinch, as if muscle memory outran the line.
The second scene is rage. She doesn't yell. She isn't theatrical. She is precise, furious at the price of being careful. The camera operator—hired for the week to capture chemistry tests—lowers the lens an inch and then lifts it again, surprised at himself.
The third scene is a whisper into a phone. "I can't hug my mama," the line says, and in the room it is Sunday afternoon and biscuits are on the counter and a woman who smells like flour and safety is crying for no good reason except that some evils don't look like villains.
When she finishes, nobody speaks first because the air is busy rearranging itself around the new center of gravity.
The producer, of course, breaks the spell by making a face like he smelled sincerity. "She's…a lot," he says.
"Correct," Ivar answers.
"She's also your—" He gestures at the air where gossip lives. "—complication."
"Incorrect," Louise says. "She's your lead."
The producer smiles without warmth. "Optics, darling."
"Optics are for men who don't know what truth looks like," she replies, and flips her notebook closed.
He shifts, wanting to power-up. "There are…expectations."
Ivar turns the pen in his fingers until the click becomes a metronome. Then he stops clicking and speaks so evenly even the fluorescents listen. "Here are mine," he says. "We cast the right actor. We pay them right. We protect the story. We don't make a cage, we make a sky. If you can't live with that, there's a lobby downstairs with a security guard who would love to hold the door while you practice leaving."
The producer studies him. There's a moment—small, visible to people who look for it—where he decides whether to escalate or adapt. He adapts. "Understood," he says with an oily professionalism he must have learned in a previous life as a serpent.
"Good," Ivar says. "Next."
The day lengthens the way rope does when it's been asked to hold too much—fibers showing, inner threads visible, but still strong. Between auditions, they review tape. For Spider-Man, it narrows to three. For Iron Man, two. For Rogue, the room pretends there is a debate because the room has to obey ritual, but the debate is a choreography around a foregone conclusion.
Between takes, texts arrive like birds: Megan sends a photo from a fight coordinator's gym, knuckles wrapped, smile cutting. Batwoman learns to fall and not break. She adds a bat emoji and a flame.
Rosa drops a photo of a pallet marked OPEN PLAY rolling into a children's hospital lobby. A tiny hand is visible at the edge of frame, reaching toward the star logo. We didn't do PR, she writes. We did joy. Your orders.
The white-blouse investor emails: Audit complete. If the next tranche doesn't wire by EOD, I will set fire to my own office. Beneath it, in smaller text that looks like a joke embarrassed of itself: My daughter wants to know if Rogue will have a Southern accent.
Louise replies: Yes. And teeth.
By late afternoon, the room is oxygen-poor. The casting director's laugh has gone from free to brittle. The camera op has learned every squeak in his dolly wheels by their pitch. The producer has become quieter, which is either respect or calculation, and both are fine.
They break at five to argue about Pepper. The usual suspects are floated. The obvious choice—a woman whose last three films did a billion combined—is mentioned and then quickly set aside when it becomes clear she thinks supporting someone else's arc is beneath her. A surprising name surfaces, someone with comedic timing like a metronome and an ability to take a line that isn't funny and endow it with meaning.
"She looks like the person who keeps the receipts and the person who knows which ones to burn," Louise says.
"Call her," Ivar says.
"Her agent will try to make it about backend points," the casting director warns.
"Tell her she gets points," Ivar says. "And a spine."
The Iron Man actor they liked returns for a chemistry read with three potential Peppers. The first scene is a test disguised as banter. When the line comes—"You're breaking into my system." "I was already inside."—the second Pepper drops the joke on purpose and lets the subtext sit like a weight on the table. The air changes. Ivar grins without showing teeth.
After she leaves, he doesn't ask the room. He asks Louise. "Is she the one?"
"She's the one who will make him earn it," Louise says. "Which is better."
"Call her," he repeats.
For Spider-Man, they do something he loves and agents hate—they bring in a scene partner who isn't auditioning, a girl with hair like a thought halfway to being spoken. She's not MJ. Not yet. She's the person who will make him laugh at the wrong time in science class and then hand him the right wrench later when he saves a stranger. The boy who almost fell at the threshold proves again that grace is sometimes just a near-miss turned into choreography. He forgets a line and replaces it with something the script wishes it had written. The room takes the note and acts like it planned to.
"Have him come back tomorrow," the casting director says, eyes hiding hope.
"Have him come back forever," Ivar mutters, and Louise hides a smile behind her hand.
Between sessions, The Phantom from Fox sends a text with a number and nothing else. It's higher than the last one. It's still not right. Ivar replies with a star emoji and the words OWN THE CIRCLE. Then he sets the phone face down in front of him like a small, obedient animal and returns to the room where futures are being measured in breath control.
Near six, an older man auditions for Ben Grimm. He's wrong on paper—too handsome, too symmetrical, the kind of face magazines like to pretend tells the truth about skin care. But when he reads the line about clobberin' time, he doesn't say it like a catchphrase. He says it like a man giving himself permission to be big because the world told him he wasn't allowed. The room goes soft. The producer sniffles without permission. Nobody mentions it.
"Thank you," Ivar says again, and it feels like a prayer this time.
By seven, the light through the narrow windows has turned into the color of forgiveness. Someone brings in cold pizza. Someone else opens a window an inch and the city breathes into the room. The X's on the floor are smudged enough to look like they've been there longer than they have.
The last audition is for Magneto. Two men come in who don't understand that grief is not a costume. One man comes in who thinks menace is an accent. And then the fourth enters with a quiet that makes the air behave. He doesn't stand on the X. He steps past it and then steps back like a man checking the dimensions of a cell he intends to escape from.
He reads the scene from the camps. He doesn't cry. He doesn't clench his jaw. He tells the truth in a voice that refuses to measure itself against anyone else's decibel level. When he talks about metal, it sounds like prayer and warning.
Louise's pen stops moving. Ivar finds his hands flat on the table, as if bracing for weather.
When the man leaves, the producer clears his throat and says, hoarse and small, "I have no notes."
"Correct," Louise says.
The casting director whispers, "He'll scare them."
"Good," Ivar says, and writes the actor's name in the center of the page where nobody can miss it.
The room exhale. The day ends itself like a long chord finding resolution.
They stack headshots. They label files. They write HOLD on three manila folders and OFFER on two and CALL AGAIN on five. The casting director rubs her neck like she's unscrewing it for maintenance. The camera op pats the dolly and tells it it did good work. The producer stands slowly, as if afraid of something falling when he moves.
"This was…productive," he says, trying on civility.
"It was true," Louise corrects, and he nods like he understands that distinction now.
He leaves without a handshake. The room feels lighter, which is its own kind of handshake.
When it's just the three of them—Louise, Ivar, the casting director—they sit for a beat in the cold and the hum and the smudged X's. The city outside keeps doing city things—sirens, laughter, that low freeway ocean sound—but in here, the quiet is earned.
"Top three, Spider-Man," the casting director says.
Ivar lists them. They agree without argument who's number one.
"Iron Man."
They say the same name at the same time and don't flinch at what that will mean to insurance.
"Pepper."
They choose the woman who broke the joke on purpose and found the heart underneath.
"Rogue," the casting director says, even though she knows.
"Louise," Ivar says, and Louise doesn't smile, doesn't cry. She sets her hand on the table and drums the pads of her fingers once, twice, like a drummer counting off a song everyone knows.
"Magneto."
They don't say the name out loud, as if that would jar the spell. They just nod.
"Storm," Louise says, and the casting director's shoulders drop in relief because she's been waiting to ask. They say a name that carries weather in every vowel. They make a plan to convince her agent that regality is not a risk.
"Ben," the casting director says, hesitant, thinking of symmetry.
"We'll break his face with kindness," Ivar says, and she laughs, exhausted and raw.
They stand. Louise stretches her arms over her head and her back cracks like relief in a spine. Ivar collects the pages and slides them into a folder like you'd slide letters into a book you planned to read aloud to your grandchildren. The air-con finally kicks off; the sudden silence is almost loud.
On their way out, he stops at the taped X and stands on it. Just to feel it. Just to remember.
Louise joins him, toe on the tape, eyes on his. "How does it feel?" she asks.
"Like a trap," he says, then shakes his head. "Like an altar."
She steps closer. The fluorescents do her no favors. He loves her more for it. "Say the thing," she says.
"What thing?"
"The thing you say when you decide the world doesn't get to be small."
He breathes in the cold room and the warm hallway and the city outside and says, soft but not quiet, "We make the sky bigger."
She nods, satisfied, and threads her fingers through his. They walk out past the NO SELF-TAPES sign, past the folding table, past the waiting room chairs that held a hundred hearts today. The casting director turns off the lights and locks the door behind them. On the other side of the glass, the X's glow faintly with reflected streetlight, like stars that learned to live on floors.
In the parking lot, his phone blinks with a text from Jax: you still alive, professor? and another from Megan: Rooftop. Midnight. Bring the fire. And one more—from a number that used to refuse to text first: Fox board meeting moved up. 9 a.m. tomorrow. Wear something that doesn't apologize.
He pockets the phone and laughs into the warm night.
"I heard that," Louise says.
"Tomorrow," he replies, "we feed more foxes."
"And tonight?"
"Tonight," he says, looking up at a sky the color of reasons, "we light a roof."