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Jonny loved their shows. He loved slipping easily into the narration, he loved exaggerating his movements and expressions, he loved the thrill of the attention, he loved the nervous bantering backstage before the shows and the satisfaction after, he loved the way it got the adrenaline flowing and his heart going. Unfortunately, sometimes it got his heart going a little too much.
There were some things even a mechanism couldn’t fix, especially when it wasn’t the thing causing the problem that was mechanised. At first, they had thought his heart was faulty, until Marius took a look at it and found nothing wrong with it. He got a second opinion from Raphaella and a third from Ivy, and as Marius had thought, his mechanism was as it should be. Eventually, they concluded that the issue was his nervous system, and nothing could be done.
He knew an episode was coming on when his head felt far away and ached distantly. The breaths he had to take between lines were deeper and a few times he had to take them in the middle of lines. His vision got hazy and blurred and unblurred every few seconds. His legs felt double their usual weight. With the hand that wasn’t holding the microphone, he held two fingers to his other wrist and pressed around where he should be able to feel his pulse. Jonny had gotten good at finding his pulse, having needed to find it once or twice almost every day. Sure enough, his heart was beating faster than the average person’s would. If he had to guess, he’d say about a hundred beats per minute – not too bad, but he was certainly glad they were nearing the end of the show.
He thought he was doing a good job at hiding it, until Tim came over and draped his arm around Jonny’s shoulders, subtly giving him an outlet to deposit his weight before he hit the floor. How had he known? Half the time, his crew noticed his episodes before he did, even when they ought to be focusing on other things. Tim should have been playing guitar, but instead he was fussing over Jonny. When he asked how they knew, they always said something stupid about his breathing getting louder or the usually steady metronome they used to help coordinate their music speeding up or his balance making him look hungover. This time, he assumed it was his breathing, because he was sure he was balancing just fine and his heart wasn’t audible over the music filling the room anyway.
Jonny absolutely would not admit it, but he leaned on Tim slightly, giving him the stability he was needing more and more by the second to stay upright.
He was perfectly fine that way until their show came to a close, and Jonny did his usual overdramatic bow. He didn’t think about how stupid it was when he knew he was on the verge of an episode to bow until he had already thrown himself forward, quicker than he normally would. Luckily, Tim still firmly gripped his shoulders, holding him up. When Jonny went back up, the world lurched around him as the first wave of dizziness hit. Shit. As the lights shining on the crew faded into a blackout, Jonny felt his eyes begin to twitch and flutter frantically, refusing to stay open. He was becoming much less aware of his surroundings, focusing his efforts on staying conscious while Tim looped his arm under Jonny’s and half-carried him backstage.
Tim tried to lie him down, and he fell the last stretch of the way, but it got the job done. He dragged a chair over and propped Jonny’s legs up, which was very tiring for Jonny because of how heavy his legs had gotten. He could’ve sworn Tim was talking to him, but it sounded all muffled and distant. It wasn’t soon before the tremors came and Jonny’s vision began to fade in and out of blurriness while becoming much darker than the room should’ve been. His left eye was twitching so much now that half of his face was moving with it, and the static filling his vision was becoming even more prominent. He couldn’t breathe. No matter how desperate he got, no matter how much air he drew in, it wasn’t enough. He needed more air, but he couldn’t get it, and he was starting to think he might suffocate. His lungs couldn’t keep up with all the energy and adrenaline and frantic contracting and relaxing of all his muscles and he tried to suck in enough oxygen but he could feel it brushing down the walls of his throat and nothing was working and he couldn’t breathe.
A hand gently pushed his head up and the world lurched forward quicker than was reasonable, his chin resting on his chest. In the brief moments where he could just about see, as few and far between as they were, he could see what he registered as a packet of salt getting closer to his face. Absolutely not. Jonny hated salt, the taste was strong enough to make him gag and it always gave him this burning sensation in the middle of his chest. He weakly mumbled protests, not caring how quiet and slurred they came out, and raised a heavy arm to pathetically push away the salt. It took a couple of tries because of his utter lack of depth perception when he was like this, but he got there in the end. The salt insistently got closer to his face again.
“Jonny,” he could just about make out someone saying, “take the fucking salt.”
“No,” he protested again, knowing it was very probably slurred despite not being able to hear it himself, “don’t like salt.”
He thought whoever it was kept talking after that, but he couldn’t hear it over the ringing in his ears. His muscles were convulsing more violently, and his breaths coming out as desperate wheezes. When his vision cleared for a little longer, he looked at the wall for a couple seconds before Brian was in front of him. He definitely had to have the salt now. Brian was about as close to a voice of reason as any of the mechanisms could get, and he could be firm when he needed to. He was fairly certain that if he refused the salt, Brian would end up pouring it down his throat if it came to it.
Brian put the packet between three of Jonny’s fingers and guided Jonny’s hand towards his mouth. Jonny made a noise that he hoped came out as a request for a drink, and a bottle was placed on the floor next to his right shoulder. Jonny tilted his head back and poured the salt down his throat, taking a second to force himself to swallow past the grim taste. He didn’t mind salt itself, it was just very unpleasant to pour an entire pack down his gullet in one go. He popped open the bottle with someone’s help and quickly drank. There was probably salt everywhere around his mouth, but he was beyond the point of caring.
As he’d expected, his chest began to burn insistently between some of his upper ribs, and Jonny let his head fall back onto the floor, sending another bout of dizziness through him. He didn’t need to check his pulse to know how fast his heart was going anymore, because he could feel every beat of his mechanical heart in his chest. He didn’t have the mind to count it properly, but his estimate was about a hundred and forty beats per minute. He swallowed again, trying to get rid of the taste of the salt, but it didn’t work. All that could be done had been, all he could do now was wait it out. Luckily, he didn’t think he was going to faint, so he could probably go back to the bar and get a drink when it was over.
After a few minutes, his hearing was back and his vision was less dark. He was still shaking and twitching, but that never bothered him as much as practically losing two of his senses. Brian, Tim, and Marius were all with him backstage talking to each other and he assumed the others were mingling with the crowd after their show as they usually would. Marius asked if he was feeling better, to which he responded with a string of assorted swears that didn’t form a proper sentence. Still, that meant some of the Jonnyness was coming back to him, so the episode was probably over. He was still coming down from it, but he’d be fine in another few minutes, as long as he didn’t do anything stupid and start it up again.
The next time it happened was when a small group of bandits infiltrated the ship while they were planetside. Jonny’s plan of action had been to charge at the fuckers with guns blazing and no further plan in case anything went wrong, while Nastya fired various shots of her own and Raphaella released her latest experiment on them. They were the only three mechanisms on board, but still managed to easily slaughter the bandits. They were all laughing together afterwards when Nastya stopped. The other two stopped as well, not understanding what had happened. Then Raphaella turned to Jonny, and he heard it too.
His heart was ticking much faster than its usual metronome, and very unevenly. That explained why his laughter had been so breathless, and why he was feeling so lightheaded. He leaned even more on the wall than he had been before, trying to stay upright and doing a particularly bad job at it. His legs shook under his body weight and he willed them to stay still, but the tremors were involuntary. Nastya wordlessly held out a packet of salt, but he stubbornly refused to eat it, even as he slumped down the wall and ended up sat on the floor with his back to the wall. Nastya tried to bring the salt to his mouth, but he pushed it away about as firmly as he could when he was like this. After a few seconds of that, Nastya turned to Raphaella who had been watching, still a little unsure of how to help.
“Hold his arms out of the way,” Nastya told her, and she obliged, only wanting to help. The mechanisms had more bloodlust than anyone, but it was still unpleasant to see one of their crew in this state. He scrambled to resist, but Raphaella kept his arms firmly next to him while Nastya pulled his jaw open and poured the salt in. He coughed and chocked, but swallowed it in the end. Nastya handed him a drink, seemingly having gotten it from nowhere. Had she started carrying them around for when he got like this? Was that where she’d gotten the salt from, too? No. That was stupid, there was no need for the rest of the crew to start keeping salt in their pockets and sports drinks nearby, not when Jonny was fine without them. He didn’t need them to, they were just being sentimental bastards and trying to help refusing to leave him alone. Fuck them all.
Nastya and Raph half-carried him back to his quarters after that, helping him lie down and get his legs up. He hadn’t thanked them, just told them to fuck off once the episode was over.
Funnily enough, Jonny wasn’t the only one with the episodes. He met some mortal in a bar once with the same problem. His name was Henry, Jonny had seen his eyes twitching and fluttering the way his own did and had offered up some salt his crew had forced him to start carrying. Henry had taken it gladly, and the two of them had spent the next few hours talking about their episodes. Henry had recommended compression socks and knee braces, and Jonny had talked about the benefits of electrolytes.
Of course, Jonny felt bad for the guy. The episodes sucked and he wished he didn’t have them, but it was nice to have someone to relate to. They could share their hatred for salt, exchange various advice, and Henry managed to describe perfectly the things that Jonny had never been able to put into words. It was comforting, knowing there were people who had the same problem, even if they were only mortals and he would outlive them by millennia.
Jonny really should’ve thanked his crew for how they helped, or at least shown some vague form of gratitude. Unfortunately, Jonny had never liked being nice to people. The thought of admitting he liked about someone made the violent and maniacal Jonny D’Ville all nervous and awkward, and he could hardly ever force himself to say something kind. He didn’t do kind, he just laughed at his crew, mocked them, and made more than enough sarcastic comments to kill a broken horse. He was plenty comfortable with showing his affection through touch, but the concept of complimenting someone or doing them a favour or giving them a gift always made him a mess.
He loved getting gifts for people, but hated giving them. He’d once custom-made a pistol for Tim and gotten so nervous about handing it over that he ended up throwing it at his head. When he’d gotten a decorated lighter for Ashes, he’d shot them in the head and placed the lighter in their hand, walking away before they woke up. When he’d found a book Ivy had been searching for, he’d dropped it next to her from a vent while she was reading and scuttled away before she could see him. On the rare occasion he actually handed a present to someone, he still looked away, not wanting to see their reaction. Even if he knew for a fact they would like it, he was too nervous to see. Part of it probably came from how uncomfortable he would get when people thanked him, but he wasn’t about to start psychoanalysing himself.
Some of the crew had offhandedly commented a few times that they liked him as a person or that they were thankful for something he’d done or that they didn’t mind his lack of communication because they still knew he cared, and every time he’d had to fight off discomfort. He wanted to say nice things back to make sure they understood that he cared about them, but he could never force himself to.
Instead, Jonny did what he did best – he wrote a song about it. If he used his own feelings to write a song about some poor fucker they’d met on their travels rather than directly referring to them, he could get it all out, show that he was capable of caring about someone. He would firmly deny that any of the songs were based on his own opinions of people if asked, and that made it alright. They were just characters, it didn’t mean anything, not really. It wasn’t based on anything, he was just getting creative. It absolutely was not him trying to be nice without having to say it. They would never know. They knew. They all knew, and yet he never owned up to it. He would get all worried about performing the songs sometimes, but that didn’t matter, because if he pretended they were just characters and told himself that none of it mattered, then he could slip into his narration and perform the shows as he always did. It wasn’t special when he did it for them, either, because he wrote songs all the time. Some of his other songs were longer, anyway, and sounded better. That was good, he supposed. It wasn’t as scary if it wasn’t his best work.
He wanted to thank them, and he knew the only way he could force the words out was in a song, so he sang.