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After Haversham Manor

Summary:

Dennis has a breakdown/meltdown backstage after the events of The Play That Goes Wrong

Notes:

Written on April 10th, 2025

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

As the lights cut to black on The Murder at Haversham Manor and the audience was hastily escorted out, there was a lot of damage to deal with.

An ambulance was called for Jonathan as the tech crew did what they could to try and clean up the ruins of the show's set, and Dennis was sobbing hysterically backstage.

Seeing this and seeing that he was kind of in the way of the frantic techs, Max gently took him aside into a prop room to help him calm down.

Max tried to ask him what was wrong, but Dennis couldn't seem to find his voice due to how upset he was. Realizing this, Max decided not to ask any more questions until Dennis was feeling better, opting instead to just comforting him the best he could.

"It's okay, Den" he said gently, rubbing small circles on the other man's back. "I promise, with everything else that happened, people won't even remember your mispronunciations" he reassured. "Jonathan will be okay and, if Chris yells at you, I'll stick up for you"

Dennis didn't say anything, instead burying his face in his friend's chest and continuing to cry. Max gingerly wrapped his arms around him in a hug. He knew Dennis had issues with emotional regulation, but this was easily the worst he'd seen- Not that he could even blame the man, with how badly the show had gone.

What a mess...

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