Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2026-02-17 07:54 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2026-02-17 07:54 pm
Entry tags:
Fanfiction: Backup Heating (The Goes Wrong Show, everyone/everyone)
In the stage version of Christmas Carol Goes Wrong, Chris canonically refuses to keep the Cornley Playhouse heated, and everyone complains about how cold it is. It seemed like a great excuse to write self-indulgent fanfiction!
As this is based on the 2025 stage version of Christmas Carol Goes Wrong, be aware that some details may not match up with the original 2017 television version.
The title's not great, but the only other thing I could think of was Baby, It's Cold Inside, which would be considerably worse.
Title: Backup Heating
Fandom: The Goes Wrong Show (well, technically Christmas Carol Goes Wrong)
Rating: G
Pairing: slight everyone/everyone
Wordcount: 1,600
Summary: During rehearsals for A Christmas Carol, Chris won't allow anyone to use the heating. Clearly, the Cornley Drama Society is just going to have to huddle for warmth.
“There’s no one here,” Sandra concludes, after a quick search of the playhouse. “You said the rehearsal was at one, didn’t you?”
“I said it was around one,” Max says. “It... may have been at two.”
Sandra gives him a deeply unimpressed look. “Two is not around one.”
“They’re two of the closest numbers there are!” Max protests. “All I remembered was that it was one of the small ones.”
Perfect. They’re looking at a wait of over an hour, in the Cornley Playhouse, in December.
If anyone turns the heater on, Chris has threatened, they’re out of the drama society; they don’t have the budget for it, apparently. Privately, Sandra suspects they don’t actually have permission to use the playhouse as a rehearsal venue, and Chris is trying to keep anyone from noticing it’s in use. Whatever the reason, it’s freezing in here, and there’s nothing they can do about it.
Sandra and Max end up cuddling up together in the corner of the rehearsal room. It does something for the cold, Sandra supposes, but they might still be frozen solid by the time the rehearsal starts.
-
Just after one o’clock, Sandra hears a door opening, someone approaching the rehearsal room. From the deliberate heaviness of the tread, it’s most likely Robert; he likes to move at a volume that announces his presence.
She nudges Max. “Maybe you were right about the time after all.”
Robert enters the room, grandly, his arms outstretched. “Good afternoon!”
“Hi, Robert,” Sandra says. “Was the rehearsal meant to be one o’clock?”
“One o’clock?” Robert echoes, incredulous. “I’ve only just arrived.”
“Well, yes,” Sandra says. “At one o’clock.”
Robert shakes his head. “It’s at two. A truly dedicated thespian always arrives an hour early.”
“You hear that, Sandra?” Max asks. “Turns out I didn’t mess up; we’re just truly dedicated thespians.”
Sandra sighs. “I suppose so.”
“You don’t seem to be preparing, though,” Robert observes. “What are you doing, in fact?”
Sandra shrugs. “It’s cold. We’re early. We thought we’d cuddle up a bit to stay warm.”
“Ah! Excellent idea.” Robert stoops down and starts... attempting to worm between Max and Sandra, apparently.
“What are you doing?” Sandra asks, almost laughing.
“What do you mean, what am I doing? We are huddling for warmth. You’d think you’d know that; you’re the ones who started it.”
“Did it occur to you,” Sandra says, “that this might be a private huddle between lovers?”
Robert turns a slightly scandalised expression on her. “The playhouse is not the venue for that sort of thing.”
Sandra actually does laugh at that, and so does Max, in a quiet echo. “Well, thank God you’re here to keep us respectable.”
She shifts to let Robert between them, settles against his side. Robert may be presumptuous, but he’s also extremely warm; she’s happy to enjoy the furnace of his presence right now.
They run some lines, albeit in a fairly disjointed way; other than the scene between Belle and young Scrooge, the three of them aren’t really playing characters that interact much. The absence of a scene partner doesn’t seem to bother Robert; he cheerfully delivers his lines as the Ghost of Christmas Present to no one at all. The blocking can wait until everyone’s here; the three of them stay where they are, pressed together in the corner of the room.
Annie arrives around half past one. “Oh, this looks cosy!” she exclaims as soon as she sees them.
Sandra draws breath to explain what’s going on. Apparently there’s no need; Annie slings her bag against the wall and cuddles up against her immediately. It’s a welcome addition; Sandra has been becoming increasingly conscious, as the time goes on, of how much colder she is on the side that’s not pressed against Robert.
Not long afterwards, Dennis enters the room and hesitates.
“Hi, Dennis!” Annie calls, waving.
“Um,” Dennis says, “I don’t – I don’t remember – is this part of the play?”
“We’re just trying to stay warm,” Sandra says.
Honestly, most of the cast is present by this point; they could start moving around, making sure everyone knows where they’re supposed to be. Tucked cosily between Annie and Robert, Sandra finds herself reluctant to suggest it. It’s better to wait for the director, surely.
Dennis approaches their huddle, cautious and awkward, and then sits down a couple of feet away from Max. He looks like a skittish cat.
Max laughs. “You’re not going to be any warmer over there, you know.”
Dennis seems to hesitate again. “I didn’t know if I was part of it.”
“Right, come on.” Max leans over to put an arm around Dennis’s shoulders, pulls him closer. “You’ve got body heat, which means you’re part of it. It’s a waste to sit there freezing.”
“Oh.” For a moment, when Max first touched him, Dennis seemed to go still. Now, though, he squirms up close to Max and Robert, a small smile breaking onto his face. It makes Sandra realise, suddenly, that she hasn’t seen him smile often. “Um, okay.”
“What on Earth is going on?”
Ah. The director has arrived.
“Hello, Chris!” Dennis exclaims. “Um, do you want to sit with us? You’ve got – you’ve got body heat. Right? Which means, um, which means you’re part of it.”
Chris stares at him; he stares at the group in general. “No, I am not... part of this. I did not come here to... to cuddle in the rehearsal room. I came here to rehearse in the rehearsal room, a room specifically for rehearsal, and I’d like you all to get up and start rehearsing, please.”
Sandra checks her phone. “You came here to rehearse in fifteen minutes. Until then, we can do whatever we like.”
Chris turns an incredulous frown on her. “Wouldn’t you rather get it over with and leave fifteen minutes early?”
“We won’t, though,” Sandra points out. “You never let us leave early. It doesn’t matter when we start.”
“She’s right, you know.” Annie shifts to lie down pointedly in Sandra’s lap. “Looks like we’re just going to have to keep cuddling until two o’clock. Or you could put the heater on.”
“This is blackmail,” Chris says, “and I will not stand for it.”
Robert clears his throat. “I’d like to rehearse.”
“But you’d like to be warm too, right?” Annie asks. “Hold the line.”
“Don’t hold the line,” Chris says. “Come on, Robert, we can work on the first scene after the interval. That’s just the two of us; we don’t need these idiots.”
Robert looks speculative. “Can I play Scrooge?”
“Obviously not,” Chris says. “I’m Scrooge.”
Robert puts one arm around Sandra’s back, the other around Max. “I would never abandon my freezing comrades-in-arms in their hour of need.”
“What’s going on here, then?” Trevor asks, appearing behind Chris.
“Hello!” Dennis says. “Um, you should sit with us, because you’ve got a hot body.”
Trevor raises his eyebrows.
“Body heat,” Sandra clarifies, managing, for Dennis’s sake, not to burst out laughing. “We’re sharing body heat.”
“We are not,” Chris says. “Trevor, I forbid you from sitting with them.”
Trevor laughs, quietly. “Yeah?”
Annie bounces to her feet as Trevor approaches, tugs him by his wrist over to Sandra’s side of the huddle, and a moment later Annie is cheerfully sandwiched between Trevor and Sandra.
“This is completely inappropriate, you know,” Chris says. “I hope you’re all ashamed of yourselves.”
“Mortified,” Trevor says, resting an arm on Annie’s shoulder.
Chris spends the next ten minutes glowering at their cosy little pile, while the rest of them make conversation and cuddle up increasingly close to each other, half for the warmth and half just for the sake of annoying Chris. Sandra finds herself enjoying the experience enormously.
Eventually, as two o’clock approaches, Sandra reluctantly climbs out of the warm tangle of limbs she’s ended up in. They probably should actually get some rehearsing done.
“Thank you,” Chris says, through gritted teeth.
“Wait!” Jonathan hurtles into the room. “I’m here! I’m – I’m here on time for rehearsals, the door gave me some trouble, but I’m here, I managed to get in, I’m here on time—”
Annie pulls a sympathetic face. “Aw, Jonathan, you missed all the cuddling.”
Jonathan looks thunderstruck. “I – I missed what?”
-
It becomes an odd little tradition. Before rehearsals for A Christmas Carol, anyone who’s arrived early – Chris excepted, of course – ends up huddled together in the rehearsal room, keeping the cold at bay. On a couple of occasions, arriving just after the starting time, Sandra finds herself oddly disappointed to have missed it.
After the show itself, when they’re on their way out of the playhouse, Sandra hesitates. Glances back.
“One last huddle, before the afterparty?” she asks. “It feels like the right way to say goodbye to Scrooge.”
“Well, Scrooge should be a part of it, in that case,” Robert says. “Going to join us, Chris?”
Chris sighs. “I really don’t understand why you keep doing this. It’s... it’s very strange.”
Robert shrugs. “It’s cold.”
“And we were about to leave and go to a warm pub,” Chris says. “If you don’t have a reason to huddle for warmth, you’re just choosing to cuddle your castmates. It’s not normal, you know.”
“Are you going to join us or not?” Sandra asks.
Chris sighs again, deeper. But he’s smiling, just a little. “Fine. Show me what all the fuss is about, I suppose.”
As this is based on the 2025 stage version of Christmas Carol Goes Wrong, be aware that some details may not match up with the original 2017 television version.
The title's not great, but the only other thing I could think of was Baby, It's Cold Inside, which would be considerably worse.
Title: Backup Heating
Fandom: The Goes Wrong Show (well, technically Christmas Carol Goes Wrong)
Rating: G
Pairing: slight everyone/everyone
Wordcount: 1,600
Summary: During rehearsals for A Christmas Carol, Chris won't allow anyone to use the heating. Clearly, the Cornley Drama Society is just going to have to huddle for warmth.
“There’s no one here,” Sandra concludes, after a quick search of the playhouse. “You said the rehearsal was at one, didn’t you?”
“I said it was around one,” Max says. “It... may have been at two.”
Sandra gives him a deeply unimpressed look. “Two is not around one.”
“They’re two of the closest numbers there are!” Max protests. “All I remembered was that it was one of the small ones.”
Perfect. They’re looking at a wait of over an hour, in the Cornley Playhouse, in December.
If anyone turns the heater on, Chris has threatened, they’re out of the drama society; they don’t have the budget for it, apparently. Privately, Sandra suspects they don’t actually have permission to use the playhouse as a rehearsal venue, and Chris is trying to keep anyone from noticing it’s in use. Whatever the reason, it’s freezing in here, and there’s nothing they can do about it.
Sandra and Max end up cuddling up together in the corner of the rehearsal room. It does something for the cold, Sandra supposes, but they might still be frozen solid by the time the rehearsal starts.
Just after one o’clock, Sandra hears a door opening, someone approaching the rehearsal room. From the deliberate heaviness of the tread, it’s most likely Robert; he likes to move at a volume that announces his presence.
She nudges Max. “Maybe you were right about the time after all.”
Robert enters the room, grandly, his arms outstretched. “Good afternoon!”
“Hi, Robert,” Sandra says. “Was the rehearsal meant to be one o’clock?”
“One o’clock?” Robert echoes, incredulous. “I’ve only just arrived.”
“Well, yes,” Sandra says. “At one o’clock.”
Robert shakes his head. “It’s at two. A truly dedicated thespian always arrives an hour early.”
“You hear that, Sandra?” Max asks. “Turns out I didn’t mess up; we’re just truly dedicated thespians.”
Sandra sighs. “I suppose so.”
“You don’t seem to be preparing, though,” Robert observes. “What are you doing, in fact?”
Sandra shrugs. “It’s cold. We’re early. We thought we’d cuddle up a bit to stay warm.”
“Ah! Excellent idea.” Robert stoops down and starts... attempting to worm between Max and Sandra, apparently.
“What are you doing?” Sandra asks, almost laughing.
“What do you mean, what am I doing? We are huddling for warmth. You’d think you’d know that; you’re the ones who started it.”
“Did it occur to you,” Sandra says, “that this might be a private huddle between lovers?”
Robert turns a slightly scandalised expression on her. “The playhouse is not the venue for that sort of thing.”
Sandra actually does laugh at that, and so does Max, in a quiet echo. “Well, thank God you’re here to keep us respectable.”
She shifts to let Robert between them, settles against his side. Robert may be presumptuous, but he’s also extremely warm; she’s happy to enjoy the furnace of his presence right now.
They run some lines, albeit in a fairly disjointed way; other than the scene between Belle and young Scrooge, the three of them aren’t really playing characters that interact much. The absence of a scene partner doesn’t seem to bother Robert; he cheerfully delivers his lines as the Ghost of Christmas Present to no one at all. The blocking can wait until everyone’s here; the three of them stay where they are, pressed together in the corner of the room.
Annie arrives around half past one. “Oh, this looks cosy!” she exclaims as soon as she sees them.
Sandra draws breath to explain what’s going on. Apparently there’s no need; Annie slings her bag against the wall and cuddles up against her immediately. It’s a welcome addition; Sandra has been becoming increasingly conscious, as the time goes on, of how much colder she is on the side that’s not pressed against Robert.
Not long afterwards, Dennis enters the room and hesitates.
“Hi, Dennis!” Annie calls, waving.
“Um,” Dennis says, “I don’t – I don’t remember – is this part of the play?”
“We’re just trying to stay warm,” Sandra says.
Honestly, most of the cast is present by this point; they could start moving around, making sure everyone knows where they’re supposed to be. Tucked cosily between Annie and Robert, Sandra finds herself reluctant to suggest it. It’s better to wait for the director, surely.
Dennis approaches their huddle, cautious and awkward, and then sits down a couple of feet away from Max. He looks like a skittish cat.
Max laughs. “You’re not going to be any warmer over there, you know.”
Dennis seems to hesitate again. “I didn’t know if I was part of it.”
“Right, come on.” Max leans over to put an arm around Dennis’s shoulders, pulls him closer. “You’ve got body heat, which means you’re part of it. It’s a waste to sit there freezing.”
“Oh.” For a moment, when Max first touched him, Dennis seemed to go still. Now, though, he squirms up close to Max and Robert, a small smile breaking onto his face. It makes Sandra realise, suddenly, that she hasn’t seen him smile often. “Um, okay.”
“What on Earth is going on?”
Ah. The director has arrived.
“Hello, Chris!” Dennis exclaims. “Um, do you want to sit with us? You’ve got – you’ve got body heat. Right? Which means, um, which means you’re part of it.”
Chris stares at him; he stares at the group in general. “No, I am not... part of this. I did not come here to... to cuddle in the rehearsal room. I came here to rehearse in the rehearsal room, a room specifically for rehearsal, and I’d like you all to get up and start rehearsing, please.”
Sandra checks her phone. “You came here to rehearse in fifteen minutes. Until then, we can do whatever we like.”
Chris turns an incredulous frown on her. “Wouldn’t you rather get it over with and leave fifteen minutes early?”
“We won’t, though,” Sandra points out. “You never let us leave early. It doesn’t matter when we start.”
“She’s right, you know.” Annie shifts to lie down pointedly in Sandra’s lap. “Looks like we’re just going to have to keep cuddling until two o’clock. Or you could put the heater on.”
“This is blackmail,” Chris says, “and I will not stand for it.”
Robert clears his throat. “I’d like to rehearse.”
“But you’d like to be warm too, right?” Annie asks. “Hold the line.”
“Don’t hold the line,” Chris says. “Come on, Robert, we can work on the first scene after the interval. That’s just the two of us; we don’t need these idiots.”
Robert looks speculative. “Can I play Scrooge?”
“Obviously not,” Chris says. “I’m Scrooge.”
Robert puts one arm around Sandra’s back, the other around Max. “I would never abandon my freezing comrades-in-arms in their hour of need.”
“What’s going on here, then?” Trevor asks, appearing behind Chris.
“Hello!” Dennis says. “Um, you should sit with us, because you’ve got a hot body.”
Trevor raises his eyebrows.
“Body heat,” Sandra clarifies, managing, for Dennis’s sake, not to burst out laughing. “We’re sharing body heat.”
“We are not,” Chris says. “Trevor, I forbid you from sitting with them.”
Trevor laughs, quietly. “Yeah?”
Annie bounces to her feet as Trevor approaches, tugs him by his wrist over to Sandra’s side of the huddle, and a moment later Annie is cheerfully sandwiched between Trevor and Sandra.
“This is completely inappropriate, you know,” Chris says. “I hope you’re all ashamed of yourselves.”
“Mortified,” Trevor says, resting an arm on Annie’s shoulder.
Chris spends the next ten minutes glowering at their cosy little pile, while the rest of them make conversation and cuddle up increasingly close to each other, half for the warmth and half just for the sake of annoying Chris. Sandra finds herself enjoying the experience enormously.
Eventually, as two o’clock approaches, Sandra reluctantly climbs out of the warm tangle of limbs she’s ended up in. They probably should actually get some rehearsing done.
“Thank you,” Chris says, through gritted teeth.
“Wait!” Jonathan hurtles into the room. “I’m here! I’m – I’m here on time for rehearsals, the door gave me some trouble, but I’m here, I managed to get in, I’m here on time—”
Annie pulls a sympathetic face. “Aw, Jonathan, you missed all the cuddling.”
Jonathan looks thunderstruck. “I – I missed what?”
It becomes an odd little tradition. Before rehearsals for A Christmas Carol, anyone who’s arrived early – Chris excepted, of course – ends up huddled together in the rehearsal room, keeping the cold at bay. On a couple of occasions, arriving just after the starting time, Sandra finds herself oddly disappointed to have missed it.
After the show itself, when they’re on their way out of the playhouse, Sandra hesitates. Glances back.
“One last huddle, before the afterparty?” she asks. “It feels like the right way to say goodbye to Scrooge.”
“Well, Scrooge should be a part of it, in that case,” Robert says. “Going to join us, Chris?”
Chris sighs. “I really don’t understand why you keep doing this. It’s... it’s very strange.”
Robert shrugs. “It’s cold.”
“And we were about to leave and go to a warm pub,” Chris says. “If you don’t have a reason to huddle for warmth, you’re just choosing to cuddle your castmates. It’s not normal, you know.”
“Are you going to join us or not?” Sandra asks.
Chris sighs again, deeper. But he’s smiling, just a little. “Fine. Show me what all the fuss is about, I suppose.”
no subject
This is very true to the Cornley Drama Society!
He's not wrong! Two is closer to one than nearly any other number!
"Obviously this includes me. Why would anyone not want to include me?"
Annie! No questions, only cuddles!
"Does A Christmas Carol have a group cuddle scene I've forgotten?"
"No cuddles! Only rehearsal!"
Robert absolutely cannot be bribed into abandoning his comrades if Chris refuses to give him the one bribe he actually cares about!
Aw, Dennis!
This is definitely going to work, Chris! I see now flaws in this approach!
He made it! ...not for the cuddling.
I love how you write Chris being confused by like...affectionate touching.
no subject
This made me laugh so fondly. You're absolutely right, Robert; why would anyone not want to include you? You're perfect.
"Does A Christmas Carol have a group cuddle scene I've forgotten?"
Perhaps it should!
I love how you write Chris being confused by like...affectionate touching.
The man's got issues! From a short video in which Chris offers Mother's Day tips: 'My Mother's Day tip is to avoid hugging your mother. My mother, like all mothers, abhors any physical contact, and she's shown through the years that just as much affection can be shown through a swift pat on the back.'
Thank you so much!!
no subject
I’m not invested in making the troupe cuddle but I will be adopting this headcanon anyway:
A number of mistakes in the show have left me thinking, “how did they not catch that during rehearsals?” This explains them quite nicely.
no subject
I'm glad that could ring true! When I learnt that the stage version of Christmas Carol Goes Wrong was set at 'the Cornley Playhouse', my immediate reaction was '??? surely these guys were banned from every theatre in Cornley long ago.'