take me back to the start

Chapter 16: With or Without You

October, 2015. (2 months later).

They were entering their last few weeks of filming for Wicked, and Finn was steadily losing it.

Sitting crouched over on the floor of his hotel suite, a half empty bottle of Jack sloshing in his hands, he wondered how he had fallen to this low. He groaned as he heard the birds chirping outside his window. Looking over at the clock, he realized he had to be at work in two hours. Which meant he was going to show up on set half asleep and half drunk for the 5th time this week. His prescription for sleeping pills had been confiscated after The Incident, and he was pretty sure that he had gotten about 5 hours of sleep total in the past week.

It had all started 7 days ago, last friday.

The day when the 'tasteful sex scene' that had been added to the script had been set to be shot. Finn had known he wasn't going to be able to handle it without some liquid courage in his system, so he had downed a couple of shots beforehand.

But the scene had still ruthlessly eviscerated him regardless. Being so close to Rachel, his almost naked body against her half naked one, putting up the illusion that they were together in that way, that intimate way he dreamed about so often, but cruelly knowing all along that it wasn't real, that it couldn't be.. well let's just say torture wasn't strong enough of a word to describe it.

He had spent the entire weekend in a delirious haze of alcohol intoxication. And he hadn't been able to get out of it in time for the start of the next week.

But he had rationalized that no one on set had seemed to notice that he had been drinking the day of the sex scene, so he figured it'd be fine to do again.

What he hadn't accounted for was the fact that he would continually be sleep-deprived and drunk for the rest of the week.

And even though no one had said anything to him yet, he was still aware of the judgmental looks he had been getting.

Thinking about it now made him bring the bottle back up to his lips to gulp wincingly. Hell, if he was going to make a total fool of himself today again, he might as well finish the week with a bang.

Rachel felt her heart drop as she watched Finn walk uncoordinatedly onto set.

Not again...

She couldn't spend another day like this. Not after the past week. Yeah, Finn was a good enough actor to get away with it, but this was becoming too much. Would he insist on showing up to set drunk every day until filming was done?

The worst part was, no one was saying anything to him! Just gossiping and speculating behind his back. Was this a common practice in the film industry? Because if it was, then the film industry was absolutely disgraceful.

Even though Rachel had made it a point not to talk to him outside of their characters up until now, she resolved that she needed to speak with him if no one else was going to, before the cameras started rolling. She braced herself before approaching him as the cameramen got prepared.

He was playing with one of his suspenders, totally absorbed with the snapping sound it made as he stretched it over his linen shirt.

She crossed her arms, "Finn," she said sternly, "you're drunk."

He let go of the elastic accessory to stare at her defensively.

"And your point is?"

Rachel could feel her face reddening.

"My point is that this is unacceptable behavior and totally unprofessional. What's gotten into you?"

He crinkled his brow defiantly.