Tycoon Actor C548 (Patreon)

Thirty minutes into an eleven-hour flight, Lucas still had plenty of runway.

The 747-8 held the sky with that particular steadiness of something built for exactly this — long hours, open space, room to move. He found Joe Alwyn and Stacy Martin at the bar, Joe's long frame leaned against the counter, Stacy turning a glass slowly in her hand with the mild curiosity of someone still taking inventory of the cabin.

"You two settling in alright?" Lucas asked.

Joe looked up and let out a quiet laugh. "More than alright. This is — I mean." He shook his head, the admission easy rather than forced. "Flying private was on the list. I'll be honest."

Stacy set her glass down with a small smile. "Thirty minutes in and I am already thinking — so this is how it feels." She tilted her head. "The billionaire life. I may need convincing to go back to anything else."

Lucas smiled. "Glad it's working." He glanced at Joe. "Though I'd imagine you've had some exposure to this already."

Joe caught the implication and gave a measured look. "You mean Taylor." He said it plainly, neither deflecting nor making a meal of it — Taylor Swift, his ex, was not a subject he performed discomfort about. "Once or twice, yeah. But it doesn't get ordinary. It really doesn't."

"Hers is a Falcon 900. Twelve seats, private stateroom — genuinely impressive." He gestured vaguely around the cabin, the bar, the space stretching back beyond what he could see. "I'm currently on a 747 with a theatre room somewhere back there and a bar I had to walk to."

"It's a different category of problem entirely."

Stacy looked around slowly. "So what you're saying is she's losing."

Joe smiled into his glass. "I'm saying I've never had to walk to the bar on a plane before today."

"Hey, to be fair," Lucas said, "she talked to me about jets recently. Looking at picking up a Falcon 7X." He picked up his drink. "So she's working on it."

Stacy tilted her head, glancing around the cabin. "Still not a 747, though."

Lucas had no answer for that.

He ducked away briefly and came back with two bottles of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, set them down on the counter, and told them not to hold back. They stayed at it for the better part of an hour, the kind of easy conversation that happens when strangers realize they share a frequency.

...

The pool table room sat toward the rear of the jet. Lucas heard the voices before he reached the door — Felicity's measured tone, and two others, younger, less guarded. He stepped in to find her mid-sentence, Raffey Cassidy perched on the edge of the table, and Emma Laird in one of the chairs across from her.

Raffey's face opened the moment she saw him. "Lucas!"

Emma straightened.

"Hi, guys." Lucas nodded at all three. "Looks like you're well sorted back here."

"Just girl talk." Felicity smiled. "Nothing that needs a moderator."

Emma sat forward slightly. "Mr. Knight — I've been meaning to say it since we boarded. Thank you. For bringing us along on the flight."

"Don't mention it," Lucas said.

Raffey glanced around the cabin with the mild. "I just want to say — I've been on this plane over an hour and I think it's already ruined me for every flight I'll ever take for the rest of my life." She paused. "I'm actually quite annoyed about it."

Felicity covered a laugh. Emma pressed her lips together, losing the battle.

"Consider it a work expense," Lucas said.

That got the room. The laughter ran its course, and the air loosened into something more comfortable — the particular ease of people who've decided, without saying so, that they like each other well enough to keep going.

Felicity and Raffey drifted toward the pool table, cues in hand, their banter picking back up without ceremony.

Lucas took the chair across from Emma.

She waited until the crack of a break shot filled the room before she spoke. "Mr. Knight — I hope I can learn something from you on this project. In the acting, I mean." She said it carefully, the way someone does when they mean it and don't want it to come across as flattery.

Her hands were folded in her lap. The anticipation in her eyes was doing more work than her words.

'She's genuinely passionate — not just eager to impress.' Lucas studied her for a moment. 'Passing down some of my experience to her wouldn't be a bad idea.'

"What do you make of Audrey?" he asked. "Your character."

Emma was quiet, working it out honestly rather than reaching for the polished answer.

"She's — difficult to like, if I'm being fair about it. She's passive where she could push back. She watches things unfold that she should probably stop, and she doesn't. I understand why, when I sit with it — but understanding her and liking her aren't the same thing." She glanced up. "I keep trying to find the sympathy for her and it keeps slipping away."

Lucas nodded slowly. "That's actually the job."

She looked at him.

"Playing a character you don't like is harder than playing a villain," he said. "Villains have logic — they want something, and the wanting makes sense."

"But a character like Audrey, someone making the smaller, quieter failures — you can't hide behind intention. You have to find the one true thing she believes about herself and protect it. Even when the audience can see clearly that she's wrong." He paused. "That tension is where she lives. That's what makes her watchable."

Emma sat with it. Something in her expression settled, like a knot coming loose. "That helps. That actually really helps."

"Good." Lucas smiled. "And stop calling me Mr. Knight."

Emma had been nervous since the casting confirmation — if she was being honest, closer to petrified. Working with Lucas Knight was not the kind of thing she'd had time to mentally prepare for.

She'd felt something similar on Mayor of Kingstown, that first day on set, trying to find her footing around people who'd long since stopped noticing the room they walked into. It hadn't gone away quickly there.

It was going away here.

Lucas reminded her of Jeremy Renner in that way — someone who had every reason to make you feel small and simply didn't. He talked to her like she belonged in the conversation.

It wasn't a performance of humility. It was just how he was.

The modelling years had taught her the difference. That world had been the other kind, reliably and completely. This was better.

---

After talking with the girls for a while, Lucas made his way to the theatre area — a stretch of deep sofas facing a screen wide enough to fill the wall.

Brady and Guy Pearce were already settled in, some classic playing at low volume, the two of them watching with the particular quiet of people drawing something from it rather than just passing time.

They looked up as he came in. Lucas took a sofa and watched with them.

When the film ended, the three of them talked through it — Brady pulling threads, Guy measured and precise in his observations. Eventually Brady pushed himself up to find something to eat, and Lucas found himself alone with Guy.

Guy had been sizing him up since they boarded, not unkindly — more the way someone takes a careful look at something they haven't made their mind up about yet.

"Brady tells me you put serious weight behind making this happen." Guy's tone was even, carrying more gratitude than the words suggested. "I'll say — it means something, someone with your position backing the indie space. Rather than just staying comfortable inside the machine."

Lucas considered that for a moment. "You'd know better than most what it costs to keep saying no to the comfortable option."

Guy held his gaze, something in it shifting slightly. He'd walked away from superhero franchises, turned down the kind of commercial tentpoles that would've redefined his profile entirely — not out of stubbornness, but out of a conviction that had cost him real money and real leverage over the years. Lucas's line wasn't flattery. It was just accurate, and Guy recognised the difference.

"Fair point," Guy said quietly. Then, after a beat: "Looking forward to working with you."

He extended a hand.

Lucas took it.

Afterwards, Guy settled back, watching him with a quiet he didn't try to hide. 'He's a good actor — that much I know. But someone who's spent that long inside the Hollywood system...' He turned it over without landing anywhere. 'Does he still have the hunger he started with? Or has the machine ground it down?' It wasn't a question he could ask directly. He filed it away.

...

Time moved easily after that. The hours folded into themselves — conversation, quiet, the occasional sound of someone moving through the cabin. Before long Lucas was in his bed, which was exactly what a bed on a flying mansion should be, and he slept without difficulty.

The 747 had enough beds, showers, and one deep bathtub that the cast and crew arrived at Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport's general aviation terminal looking, on the whole, better than when they'd boarded.

Nobody was particularly eager to leave.

They stepped down onto the tarmac into cool air, the twelve hours sitting strangely light behind them — less like a long-haul flight than a short break they hadn't planned for. A few people said as much. A few just stood there for a moment longer than necessary.

Waiting on the tarmac was the Origo Studios representative — Bence Horváth, compact and efficient-looking, who stepped forward and began in English. His footing in it was careful, the sentences coming out intact but costing him something.

Then Lucas answered him in Hungarian.

Bence stopped. Looked at him. The surprise lasted about three seconds before something more composed took its place — Lucas's facility with languages had been written about, after all. He recovered and continued, visibly more comfortable now, the conversation finding its natural register.

Guy caught it from a few steps back. His brow went up, then came down.

Then Felicity responded in Hungarian too.

Less fluid than Lucas, feeling for certain words, but there and present and real.

Guy looked at Brady.

"Alright," he said. "Lucas I can almost explain. But Felicity?"

Brady's mouth turned up at the corner. "She spent months on it. The accent coaching for the role turned into the full language. She went deep."

"Did she?"

"Lucas worked with her through most of it."

Guy looked ahead at the two of them — Lucas and Bence moving easily through what was now a proper conversation, Felicity a step behind, holding her own.

'So he still has it,' Guy thought. 'That's not the behaviour of someone who stopped caring.'

He hadn't been entirely wrong to wonder. But he was revising.

---

Budapest had earned its title. The Hollywood of the Danube — that was what they called it, and not without reason. Blade Runner 2049 had been shot here. Black Widow. Scores of productions between and since.

The city had the studios, the crews, the infrastructure, and the long-practiced indifference of a place that had been hosting the film industry long enough to stop finding it remarkable. Cast and crew moving through the streets registered as background noise.

A convoy of black SUVs pulling up outside a hotel was not worth a second look.

Most of the cast stepped off without incident. Lucas was a different matter and he knew it. He came out with Jack and Simon flanking him, cap on, sunglasses up, plain clothes. A few people on the pavement glanced his way as the group moved toward the entrance.

'Another celebrity who thinks he's something special,' ran the general assessment, and they looked away again.

They wouldn't have looked away if they'd known who it was.

Brady broke off with Bence at the doors to sort the production logistics. The rest settled into the hotel. Rest was the instruction for everyone — twelve hours of flying, regardless of how comfortable, still landed you somewhere new and out of sync.

Lucas went to his room, set his bag down, and opened the kit on the bathroom counter. He'd come prepared.

Jack appeared in the doorway. Simon a step behind him. They watched him lay out the components in silence for a moment.

"You're going out in disguise, boss?" Jack watched him unpack the kit onto the bathroom counter. Less a question than a statement of resignation.

"Yeah." Lucas uncapped a small jar, checked the tone against his wrist. "Wanted to see the city. This is the Hollywood of the Danube — I'm not sitting in a hotel room. And I promised some of the others I'd show them around."

Simon elbowed Jack. "Leave him. Been a while since I've seen the kit come out." He looked over Lucas's shoulder at the counter. "Haven't seen you do this in a while. Going with the one people have seen before?"

"It's been years," Lucas said. "They'll have forgotten."

He worked the mirror for under twenty minutes. Hair restyled, skin tone shifted slightly, the nose reshaped just enough to break the recognition pattern. NYC cap, sunglasses, clothes that read as local — nothing that flagged money or industry. When he stepped back, the version of himself that appeared on magazine covers was simply gone.

He changed into the prepared outfit and headed out. Jack and Simon followed at a distance that looked like nothing.

...

Lucas knocked on Felicity's door. She stepped out already in sunglasses, took one look at him, and stopped a laugh before it got out — just barely, turning her face away for a second.

Raffey and Emma were just behind her. Both went quiet, eyes moving over his face.

"Is — is that you, Mr. Knight?" Emma asked.

Felicity composed herself. "No point pretending, Emma. This is his classic disguise — there are pictures of it floating around online. Has been for years." She looked at Lucas with mild amusement. "Someone put together a fairly detailed comparison post. You'd be surprised how many people have seen it."

"That was years ago," Lucas said. "People scroll past and forget."

"Some do." Felicity smiled. "Sure."

Lucas turned to Raffey. "I'm not recognisable, right?"

Raffey studied him for a moment longer than was ideal. "...Yeah."

Lucas chose to take that at face value. He turned to Emma, who had drawn a breath to say something. "And it's Lucas. We've covered this."

Emma let the breath go. "Right. Sorry. Lucas."

They talked for a few more minutes in the doorway, then filed down through the lobby and out into the street, Jack and Simon absorbed into the crowd somewhere behind them — close enough, invisible enough.

The city received them without ceremony.

For Raffey and Emma, Budapest was new — first time in the city for work — and it showed in the way they walked, taking things in without trying to look like they were taking things in. Felicity knew her way around and didn't make a thing of it.

She kept half an eye on Lucas as they walked. Waiting, with quiet amusement, to see how long the disguise held. Still fine.

Their first stop was the Shoes on the Danube Bank. Sixty iron pairs at the river's edge — boots, heels, a child's small pair beside an adult's — facing the water, scattered the way shoes look when someone has just stepped out of them. The history of the place did what it always does. Raffey and Emma's conversation wound down on its own. Nobody said anything.

Lucas stood looking at the shoes. Something moved in him and he made a choice — let László in, just to feel what the man would feel standing here. Curious the way an actor gets curious.

He got his answer quickly enough. It settled over him like something heavy and old — not sharp, long past sharp, the kind of feeling that becomes part of how a person carries themselves. László had been young here. He had known this city in that winter.

Lucas started moving slowly along the shoes without entirely meaning to.

Felicity caught the change in him — the way he was walking, the way he was holding himself — and touched Raffey's arm quietly.

Raffey looked. Emma followed.

They watched Lucas for a moment, not sure what they were seeing exactly.

Raffey leaned slightly toward Felicity. "Is he alright?"

"He's in character," Felicity said quietly. "László."

It took a beat to land. Then Raffey and Emma both looked back at him with different eyes — László Tóth. Hungarian, Jewish, a survivor. Someone who had been young in this city during that winter.

Lucas had been building him for months, and he'd brought him here to see what this place would do to him.

The feeling rose and Lucas came back out of it, stepping away from the edge.

He stood there, heart still heavy with what László had left behind — not clean, not gone, still sitting in his chest like something borrowed that hadn't fully lifted.

'War never delivers what the people who start it promise. It just takes. The people whose shoes are here weren't soldiers or threats — they were just living. And someone with power decided that was reason enough.'

He looked at the small pairs among the iron rows.

'László knew that before he was twenty. Carried it the rest of his life. And still, somewhere, right now, someone is using the same clean words to justify the same thing. Security. Necessity. Survival. The words never change. Only the shoes do.'

'It is never the answer. It never has been. And the tragedy is that people only seem to believe that once it's too late to matter.'

The Danube moved past below, grey and slow.

Felicity walked over to him. "You fine?"

"Yeah." Lucas glanced at her, then back at the shoes. "I just switched to László for a bit. Wanted to see how it felt for him, standing here." He shrugged lightly. "These shoes are really sad."

Raffey looked at Emma. Emma looked at Raffey.

Normally that would sound like the kind of thing an actor says at a dinner party. Oh, I just switched into my character to feel his emotions. Right. Very impressive. Thank you for that.

But they had both just stood there and watched it happen. With their own eyes. The walk, the posture, something in his face that had stopped being Lucas entirely. That wasn't something he was telling them about himself. That was something they had witnessed.

'Blimey,' Raffey thought, watching him stand there completely unbothered, like he'd just mentioned he'd tried the local coffee. 'He's pretty amazing, isn't he?'