Work Text:
Dead Set
There was something wrong with his Mechanism.
This was horrible timing too, so he had warned everyone that he’d be sitting down this performance, since he was not feeling well. He didn’t think it was that big a deal, since he generally had plenty of warning before things turned to absolute shit when it came to his stupid constantly ticking heart.
He didn’t have the energy to prance around the stage like he normally would, and his skin was all clammy and cold. Circulation problems. He’d need to go have a chat with Raphaella after the concert to set up some maintenance time, because he obviously needed it.
Okay, he’s needed it for a while now, he just kept putting it off like an idiot. That was nothing new.
He was thankfully not the singer for Lost in the Cosmos, and he was sitting down waiting for the next song when the malfunction happened and his heart lost rhythm. He curled up, hand with microphone held close to his heart, making the off ticks very prominent to all in the building. The music stopped.
“Jonny?” Ivy asked, since he was sitting next to where she was by the side of the stage, her instruments in their cases by her side.
He grunted. “Fuck. Malfunction. I’m having a heart attack.”
She patted her lap, so she could still use her hands to play, and he crawled over to her, laid himself down and rested his head against her belly. She was soft and warm, and she ran a hand through his hair as the pain ramped up and left him a whimpering mess in her lap.
“Don’t worry guys, I have him. I won’t let anyone not of the crew touch you while you’re out, Jonny.”
He grunted at her as his heart ticked out of sync, becoming more erratic and causing a shit load of pain. He hated having heart attacks. Why did he have to have such a stupid hangup over something as needed as routine maintenance.
Either way, he was interrupting the show by dying. Ivy couldn’t play while she was busy playing with his hair, but he appreciated it, because they all knew how much he hated dying like this. He’d take the scraps of comfort he was given when he could get them, and this was a little bit of nice in a mass of bad.
They hadn’t started playing yet. Probably because they’d need Ivy for the next song, and they would just have to improvise with someone else doing his part of Lucky Sevens. It’s not the first time they’d had to improvise with who sang what because one of them was not there or was dead. This was the first time one of them had died on stage though.
With a clanking noise, his mechanism finally gave up the ghost and with a few gasping breaths, he died in Ivy’s lap.
* * * * * * * * * *
With a deep breath, Jonny jerked alive again and coughed loudly wincing as every movement shot pain through his body. Damn it, one of the gears had slipped. Now he definitely needed maintenance.
“Oh, fuuuuuuuck, that hurts,” he stated into the soft flesh of Ivy’s thigh, where his head now was. There was a blanket over him, probably to keep him out of view as he was dead. It would be a bit distracting from the show, after all.
It was wet and soggy and gross, but he was expecting that. Consequences of death. He really wished he hadn’t done that on stage. It was really embarrassing. He moved his head back to where it originally was and whined. “Ivy, I need maintenance like, right now. Gear shifted.”
“Oh, is that what happened?”
He nodded. “Hurts still. Can feel it.”
Ivy picked up her mic. “Gear shifted. Raphaella, he’s yours when we get off stage.”
“Got it!” Raphaella replied back, while plunking away at the keys. How he hadn’t noticed that the music hadn’t stopped was beyond him. He kept his head down and soldiered on through pain. By being loud and obnoxious and he wished he could be prancing about on the stage and singing right now, but no.
By the time their set was over, he was half asleep even over the music, as he was exhausted and in pain and he was having trouble with his circulation and would until he was seen to. Ivy stacked up the cases of her multiple instruments beside them, before going back to running a hand through his hair. He was sticky with sweat, but she didn’t seem to have a problem with that.
He had no idea where his mic or harmonica had disappeared to, and he knew he died with both in hand. He grunted and squirmed into a position to look at what was going on around him. The band was pretty much ignoring him. The crowd that stuck around after he died was staring wide eyed at him. He blinked. “What? You heard the intro. What part of immortal is hard to understand. We don’t stay dead. Where the fuck is my stuff, Ivy?”
Ivy reached down to the ground and pulled his mic and harmonica from where it was hidden from his view by her leg. “They’re here, Jonny. I won’t let anyone steal your things.”
He hummed and tried to sit up. His chest rattled and he slumped back down. “Ah, fuck! Nope, not getting up on my own power. Stupid malfunctioning piece of shit heart…”
Ivy patted him on the back. “There there. Raphaella will fix it when we get back to the Aurora.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I hate this.”
“We all do.”
He let out a sigh, followed by a wince. “Yeah. Think I’m likely going to die again when Raphaella comes to pick me up, because I cannot keep this up for long.”
Ivy’s hand went back to his head. “I could snap your neck for you. It will take longer to heal, and you likely would be on ship by the time you come back.”
He thought about that one, before giving a nod. “Just as long as I don’t wake up strapped to the table in the lab, fine.”
Ivy grinned down at him. “She knows not to do that.”
He grunted and scowled. “Like that would stop any of you fuckers…”
“It would stop those of us there when Doctor Carmilla was on board.”
He felt the shudder as he thought of that and reached his hands up to curl around the metal plate on his chest. “Maybe…”
Ivy nodded, moved her hands so they were in the right places and twisted.
He woke up in the med bay on a bed with a curtain around him, his head resting on Ivy still. He wasn’t tied down. He was so relieved at that, he almost started crying. If anyone asked, it was from pain. Yeah, pain is totally why.
At least it was a believable lie.