At Ease
₊˚.༄ Pairing: Mike Logan x GN reader
₊˚.༄ Synopsis: you get a phone call and suddenly, everything around you is spinning and before you know it, you're calling the only person who knows how to help — or, essentially, the one where Mike comforts you through a panic attack.
₊˚.༄ Warnings: explicit mentioning of a panic attack, medication (assumed sedative or anti-anxiety medication, explained no further beyond a little white pill), talking down and breathing exercises, words and language describing the feeling of a panic attack and the sense of doom (written partially by my own experiences having them, but if there are any flagrant inaccuracies let me know so I can better depict this in the future) use of pet names/terms of endearment such as sweetheart, mentions of food
Everything’s in a haze after that call and suddenly you can’t really breathe.
The way your chest feels like it is both being cleaved apart and wedged in a trash compactor makes you reach for that unlabeled orange pill bottle in your bag in desperation, catching the way your hands tremble at unlatching and unzipping and rifling through the junk at the bottom of the bag you didn’t get a chance to clean out to find it and quickly pop the top. Three perfect white little pills are tipped from the bottle onto the lid and then dropped onto your awaiting tongue. They turn to a sticky-tacky feel the second they meet your spit from your slick mouth, clung to your tongue.
The tip of your tongue presses to your teeth before flicking back those little tacky white pills into your throat and swallowing, followed by deep gulps of water that are more than you need but it's better to feel your throat seize around the water than around nothing.
Your hands are moving on their own accord, forgetting to lock the doors to your office, pacing and trying to think of what to do as you just sit in the panic as you wait for your medication to kick in and bring ease blanketing over you — you’re calling him before you can stop yourself or even realize that you’re methodically dialing his number, muscle memory and a greater sense of preservation taking over as you continue to shake, nearly misdialing before you put the call through.
It's not like what they say when the doctors or your friends ask if you feel that you’ll die or that the world is going to end. You feel like everything is disintegrating, like you’re drowning inside yourself while you remain a vessel, a husk. It's all hot but it's all freezing your skin is too warm and you can feel the sweat under your sweater that’s clinging to your skin and you want to peel it off but the second you do you’d freeze and shake even harder and everything hurts but its not pain pain its this weird sense and —
“Yeah sweetheart?”
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck fuck fucking fuck.
Barely getting your voice to work, you manage a stuttery hey halfway through him asking what was up and he knows, of course he knows.
He’s seen this go down before and watched as you dissolved before him once about who knows what, and you can hear Mike’s tone change and that he’s going to call you back in just a second, “just one, gotta’ get to a place I can hear you. Hold on, I’ll be right back I’m not goin’ anywhere,” and hangs up.
You wait, just hovering by the phone and feeling the sense of panic begin to just gnaw at your innards like some weird internal manifestation of a dread-vulture, picking you apart, a weird spin on guilt and the tale of Prometheus but instead of your liver the cursed bird just rips and tears at your stomach and all the soul in you.
Mike calls back, and you jolt at the shrill noise, forgetting how quiet it was in your office barring your faltering, panting in and out breath before you pick up and he’s softly asking you where you are and if he needs to come get you. You’re shaking your head even though he can’t see it but you know he can just sense it, see it even though it's over the phone and Mike’s miles away and god it hurts. “Got it, ‘kay? I’ll stay on as long as y’need.”
“It’s okay, you’re going to be okay,” he’s immediately carrying on and the tears are welling at your eyes because no it does not feel like anything’s okay, that nothing ever will be okay but you sniff and hum out a note in response so Mike knows you hear him, “you safe and sound right now?”
“Y-yeah, in my of-office.”
It’s like forcibly pulling teeth to get you to talk right now and not like you don’t want to, it's just like wrenching into yourself to find the ability to even speak, and sure his voice is helping it always does knowing that he’s here for you, that he’s not judging and is just concerned and cares and you get to tell that little voice in your head that sounds louder than normal that no, he does care about you and does not think of a burden. he loves you and that’s real, this isn’t real — but he is.
“Did’ya take your meds? Water and snack?”
“Took meds ‘n water, no snack,” you murmur into the phone receiver, the cord wound around your finger until it's tight enough to indent your skin, now feeling the pulse in your digit. It's nearly childish the way Mike phrases it but it's true — your attacks roll through you so much worse when you don’t take care of yourself and run on low energy.
You know he’s going to ask if you can get one and tell him before he even questions that you’ll grab a spare granola bar from your desk in a second but after sitting by the phone you don’t feel like you can even move let alone get up.
“Stay put then for a bit,” Mike pauses and you can just picture his furrowed brows and him sitting somewhere quiet or standing out in the hall, away from the casual chaos of the precinct’s bullpen, but you still hear muffled noise. “Want to do that breathin’ thing or the senses exercize you do wit’me when I call you after a nightmare or a panic attack?”
It's quiet for a beat before you get the words out, your voice soft in a way that hurts his heart through the phone. “Yes please.”
You hear him inhale into the receiver before shuffling. “Breathin’ first, ‘kay sweetheart?”
You’ve noted that Mike’s heavy-handed with the terms of endearment and it makes your heart cease from its panicked seizes to flutter every once in a while, bringing a watery smile to your face, eyes still stinging from the tears. “Inhale for me, four seconds, I’ll count you down.”
He pauses and waits for a moment, and you tilt your head back and feel your throat bob tight. “Four.”
Inhaling slowly, your breath stutters as you begin to breathe in gradually.
“Three.”
The milliseconds pan out and you make it to two and shakily inhale to him saying one.
“Hold it, counting down.”
“Four.”
Your nostrils flare as your lungs start to fight. Mike can hear you through the phone and he’s weaving through people while glancing down at his watch and marking the seconds.
“Three, y’got this baby.”
Tuning out, you don’t hear the signal for two or one second left and already start exhaling when he tells you “Exhale.”
Your head feels more solid compared to the hollow bees-nest feel of earlier and your lungs no longer shake so viscerally, you follow along with the countdown and follow when Mike asks you to repeat and repeat and repeat until he asks “How’re you feeling?”
“Better,” you blink, still not really present and now regretting not asking him to come and get you but you’re not going to say it, you’d feel worse if you had to ask after assuring him that it was not needed, “not good, but a bit better.”
“That’s a start, alright, what can you feel? Five things if you can manage.”
It takes you a second, thumb swiping the plastic of the phone receiver in your hand and you tell him that, following with the desk beneath you that you’re sitting on. The soft itch of your sweater is said next, then you falter when your hand brushes against your skin and you tell him you feel the ring on your finger, the both of you noting the slight lift in your voice when you say it, and you end with the feel of your skin under your hands.
“Good, taste anything?”
“The mints I had earlier, my meds slightly. Salt?”
He laughs a little at the way you question the taste of salt, knowing it's from the frenzied panic tears but the way your voice lifts amuses him. “‘Kay, smell?”
You sniff, nose upturning. “Must.”
“C’mon now.”
“Must and dust,” you mouth back before sighing, “my perfume a lil’bit and my hand lotion.” You’re moving finally into the chair behind your desk and ease into it, scooting close to the desk and toy with the cord on the phone again, curled around your finger just like he is.
“Alright, let me know what you see.”
You oblige, not noting the sounds in the background on his call and how it muffles at some point but you look around your office, “I see the books on the shelves, the flowers I was given last week,” you list off, tilting in your chair to look away and you hear steps nearing your office. That seize in your chest constricts and you’re now on alert and it feels like you’re about to regress back and before you can tell him that you need to hang up, the door opens.
Sighing and then grinning, you tell him one last thing before the two of you hang up.
“And I see you too.”
