Work Text:
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Everything Jake had on the case, from the transcript of the landlord's 9-1-1 call to the bloodied murder weapon, was spread out over two tables. There was too much to go through. He had no idea where to start, or where anything should go, or if the physical placement of any of it even mattered. Should the crime scene photos go next to the woman's shoe? Should an unfashionable wedge have even been a part of the evidence gathered?
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Jake ran his fingers roughly through his hair, really pulling it more than anything. His leg bounced rapidly beneath the table, and he released a breathy sigh that turned into a groan of frustration. Yes, of course the shoe was important. The victim was a single man living alone, and there was no matching shoe anywhere in the apartment. There was no reason for a lone woman's wedge to be abandoned on his otherwise tidy bedroom floor.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Unless it was the remainder of a one night stand, but how wasted did you have to be to stumble home wearing only one shoe? Maybe a relative left it behind. But why on his bedroom floor? The shoe also did nothing to explain the bloody footprints dried into the victim's carpet. They were a size thirteen in men’s, far too large to have been made by the missing wedge. Maybe it really wasn't that important. Maybe he just liked to wear women’s shoes sometimes.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Jake slammed a fist down on the metal table. He'd moved all of this crap into the interrogation room so he wouldn't have to listen to incessant background noise. At this point, the detective was about five tick-tocks away from tearing that clock off the wall and smashing it with a sledgehammer. Rosa probably kept one somewhere.
To be fair though, it was less about the clock – though, God, that was so annoying – and more about this case. This case that he'd been repeatedly going over and over and over for the past five days, blatantly ignoring Terry's all too pitying suggestion that maybe he should call this one a cold case and move along. This case that ran through his head every second of every day, even in his dreams, his own brain taunting his inability to solve it. This case that had caused him to miss his thirty-day psychiatry appointment to refill his medication, which definitely wasn't helping things.
The lady on the phone at the psychiatrist's office, who had sounded utterly bored and uncaring, told him the earliest they could get him in was two weeks from the original appointment date. Oh, and he also had a no-show fee to pay. Something else to add to his ever-piling, crippling debt. That was always nice.
All of this in combination was causing Jake to feel something he couldn’t quite place. Anxiety? He couldn’t recall ever having anxiety before. Were a constricted chest and unquenchable irritability symptoms of anxiety? Whatever it was, it sucked. Bad.
This feeling of crushing overwhelm used to be normal for him; sometimes it still was. He’d gone so long in life without a diagnosis or medication that he’d just grown accustomed to struggling. Not doing very well and fighting to keep up had always been his norm. It wasn’t until now, when he found himself without any medicine after nearly two years of taking it, that Jake realized how much it had actually been helping.
Jake was also beginning to realize that he had developed no new skills or habits to compensate for his symptoms since he’d been diagnosed. That wasn’t very good. Pills don’t teach skills, as every doctor he saw in the past twenty months had recited. Now Jake regretted rolling his eyes when they had their backs turned. They were, apparently, right.
But medical professionals were the same people who let his ADHD (“you have a textbook case,” his psychiatrist often said in wonder, “why on earth weren’t you diagnosed as a child?”) slip by for thirty-three years without so much as catching a whiff. So excuse him for not quite trusting doctors the way he used to.
The medicine was definitely a help. But how much more could he have improved his life if he’d also been developing healthy coping mechanisms this whole time? Maybe this case wouldn’t be stressing him out so intensely if he had any idea how to coax himself into letting go of hopeless endeavors.
The clock was still ticking, obnoxiously. That was another thing he’d forgotten about; never being able to tune out the constant white noise of life happening around him. Jake was still bothered by things like ticking clocks while on his meds, but not to this extent. He felt an inexplicable urge to dramatically sweep his arms over the table and send all of his hard work crashing to the floor. His hands twitched to do so, and Jake clenched them into fists, biting his tongue to hold back the shout of fury rising in his throat.
It was all too much. Not just this case, but everything. How did he live like this for so long? This was hell. He wanted his new normal back. Scratch that, he wanted to be normal to begin with.
Life was awful, he was awful, everything was just awful.
Needless to say, it was not a good moment for anybody to be interrupting him. Somebody decided to do so anyway.
The door to the briefing room opened, and Jake felt his stress levels surge tenfold. Someone probably had something for him to do and would likely want it done sometime soon. They were basicallyjust asking to be disappointed.
“Here you are. I was looking for you.” Of course it was Holt. Of course it was the one person in the precinct who had the power to fire him and consequently the one person he couldn’t blow his lid at. Naturally.
Were his hands shaking? That was so weird. Jake hid his hands under the table. They were definitely shaking.
“What do you want?” Jake asked, much harsher than he meant to. His heart pounded painfully. His brow was starting to sweat; he could feel the first droplet forming and rolling down the side of his face. It wasn’t even hot in the briefing room. Could Holt suspend him for having a bad attitude? He probably could.
Holt gave him an odd look, studying his employee from head to toe. Jake felt his ego bruising in an almost physical way. Holt was obviously judging him. That realization ignited another wave of rage. The feeling barreled through him without warning.
“I would like you to show your superiors some respect, as a starting point,” Holt said smoothly. Calm. Emotionless. A robot. He didn’t care how much another person was struggling, he never cared. What a dick. “And then I want you to take all of this down to the evidence room and put away this ridiculous case. You have no leads, and there is a stack of highly solvable cases on your desk. Which, by the way, is where you should be working. Is there any particularly reason why the blinds are shut?”
And wasn’t that just so typical, tasks and demands and obligations piling up while he was stuck on one thing that he should have been done with a long time ago. Nothing new to see here.
God, his chest really was so tight. Did the windows in the briefing room open? He needed them open, like, yesterday.
“So, what, this man doesn’t deserve justice?” Jake snapped, gesturing angrily toward the gruesome corpse photos spread out in front of him. “I should give up on him, just because it’s too hard?”
Holt cocked his head to the side.
“Are you feeling alright?” He asked. “It’s not like you to speak to me so disrespectfully, unless you’re trying to ‘joke around.’”
“I’m fine,” Jake said as he began to throw the evidence haphazardly back into its box. Something in the back of his head told him that slamming evidence around in front of the Captain was probably not a good idea. Jake pointedly ignored it. Better a woman’s wedge shoe than another person’s face. “You’re telling me to give up on finding justice for this man’s family. So, yeah, I’m pretty pissed.”
“You’ve been ‘pissed’ all morning,” Holt pointed out. Jake felt like hitting something because he was right, goddamn it, but he would sooner die than confess that aloud. “Be advised, as much as I would like you to stay and work on your more promising cases, I will send you home for the rest of the day, if necessary.”
Sitting around doing nothing while the worked piled and piled and piled until it became an avalanche, pinning him beneath its weight and suffocating him. Sounded like just another day at the office to Jake.
“Send me home, then,” Jake grumbled. He didn’t mean it, but he’d be damned if he silently did as he was told, or worse, apologized.
“Fine. Go home.”
“Fine. I will.”
Jake rose to his feet – and soon dropped to his knees on the floor, legs quivering. When did his legs start quivering? He saw Holt take a step toward him, hand outreached as if to grab him.
He was having a much harder time breathing than he should have been. There wasn’t enough air in the room. Jake gripped the edge of the table, trying to keep himself upright. He wanted nothing more than to curl up into a ball on the ground and cry. Wow. That escalated quickly.
“Jake,” Holt said slowly, taking another couple of steps toward him. “Are you sure you’re feeling alright? I’ll let Santiago drive you home if you’re unwell.”
“I’m fine,” Jake wheezed. There was no bite in his words anymore. The anger was leaving him as quickly as it came. Pure terror took its place, latching securely onto him. “I’m...uh. Not so fine. Can’t breathe.”
Holt squatted down to his level.
“Are you allergic to anything?” He asked with a hint of what Jake could only describe as urgency.
“Yeah,” he breathed. “Bees. Wasps. Wasn’t stung. ‘S not that.”
What Jake refused to verbalize was the intense fear that was starting to paralyze him, radiating from his very core. He was having a heart attack. He was having a stroke. He was having a heart attack and a stroke, and an aneurysm, too. He was dying, dying, dying.
“God,” he choked out. It sounded way too much like a sob. Jake couldn’t find it in him to be embarrassed. He reached out in Holt’s general direction, grappling for something to keep him planted to Earth. “Shit. I can’t breathe. I can’t...I’m not – I can’t breathe.”
Holt grasped his outstretched wrist tightly. A hand was placed flat on his chest, pushing him.
“Sit down,” Holt said way too nicely. Later, Jake would marvel over his boss’s relative gentleness. In the moment, it just made him want to cry. He didn’t need kindness, he needed an ambulance, didn’t Holt understand that? “You don’t need an ambulance.” Had he said that out loud? His mouth was broken, too. Stroke, definitely a stroke. “Peralta. You are not having a stroke. I believe this is a panic attack. You need to sit down.”
Jake wobbled on his knees before reluctantly obeying, allowing the Captain to push him into a seated position against the wall. He pressed himself against the solid surface as hard as he possibly could, tethering his body to reality.
He really couldn’t breathe. He was getting dizzy, the world was spinning, he couldn’t breathe. Air refused to come to him in anything but short, uneven gasps.
Holt began to pull his hands away, satisfied with the detective’s new position, and Jake grabbed frantically at the older man’s sleeves, holding them in his fists. A fully realized sob escaped him.
“Don’t go,” he cried. Jake had never in his life felt so intensely desperate for another human being’s company. “Don’t go, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe –“
“I’m not leaving,” Holt said. He placed a hand on either of Jake’s shoulders, neither acknowledging nor attempting to remove Jake’s hold on him. “I’m going to demonstrate an acceptable breathing pattern now. Please try to follow along.”
“Are you – sure I’m not dying?” Jake gasped. He couldn’t figure out whether the droplets falling into his lap were sweat, tears, or both. Frankly, he didn’t care. “It’s – this is a panic...attack? I – shit – really f-feel like I’m dying.”
“That is typical of intense anxiety,” Holt said quietly. “I can assure you, you aren’t dying. Please listen to my breathing and try to follow along.”
Holt’s breaths were too long. Jake tried to do as instructed, because he would do anything to make this stop, but his own breaths were only a third of the length and his lungs burned with the effort. He gave up completely after the fifth or sixth exhale, crying out in frustration. His hands tightened around Holt’s forearms.
“I can’t,” Jake sobbed. “I can’t. There’s not – enough air, I can’t.”
As if the moment wasn’t shaping up to be a humiliating enough memory, Jake started full-on ugly crying. He was almost entirely positive he was dying, and the one person available to call for medical assistance wanted him to practice yoga breath techniques instead. He was going to die here on the floor of a briefing room from a stress-induced heart attack. He would never see Amy again.
“You are not dying,” Holt said again. “Let me see your hand.” The Captain tried to pry one of Jake’s hands from his own arm, to no avail. “Jake, give me your hand. That is an order.”
He reluctantly allowed Holt to unravel his fingers. His other hand’s grip on the man’s arm tightened to compensate.
(This breakdown of his would leave Holt with bruises on his arms for days, a fact he would ensure Jake was never made aware of.)
Holt placed Jake’s trembling hand over the detective’s chest. Jake immediately felt his own heart beating strong and hard through his skin – threatening to jump out of it, in fact. Was that supposed to be a comfort?
“Your heart rate is very fast, which is normal for the situation,” Holt informed him in a low, soft tone. “It is also consistent and strong. There is nothing wrong with your heart. Your pupils are blown, which is also expected, but they are not uneven. Your facial expressions are not lopsided, as they would be if you were having a stroke. You are having an episode of severe anxiety. You are not dying.”
Against his better judgment, Jake pulled his head away from the wall and let it fall to rest on the Captain’s shoulder. He so wished it were Amy’s instead, so he wouldn’t have to apologize later, and so she could stroke his hair and shush him and tell him she loved him and that everything was okay.
Obviously, Holt offered none of those things. He made no move to push Jake off, though. He kept one hand on the younger man’s shoulder, the other resting lightly on his elbow.
It was somehow easier for Jake to copy Holt’s breathing when he could feel it rising and falling beneath his forehead. Jake made a point of following along as audibly as he could to remind himself it was possible. He had no sense of how long they’d been sitting there, even though the clock was still so loud on the wall above them.
“I can breathe,” Jake whispered, more to himself than anything. “’S fine. I’m breathing. I can breathe.” He still felt like digging a hole in the ground and burying himself alive; an insatiable need to hide from an unnamed mortal danger. But at least he was breathing. Kind of.
“You can,” Holt confirmed. Jake didn’t need that but it was nice to hear anyways.
“How long’s this ‘sposed to last?”
“It differs. Panic attacks typically last between twenty to thirty minutes, with symptoms peaking at around ten minutes. It’s been nearly fourteen since you collapsed.”
That long? Already? That didn’t sound right.
“Didn’t collapse,” Jake murmured. His eyes fluttered sleepily for a few moments, until he gave in and allowed his heavy lids to fall. Just for a moment, to rest them. “Fell with style.”
“I see your ability to ‘joke around’ has returned. It looks like you’re recovering well.”
Jake tightened his grip almost automatically.
“I’m still not leaving,” Holt said.
“Oh. Sorry.”
They lapsed into silence. Jake felt his physical symptoms subsiding gradually. Breathing came easier and his heart wasn’t pounding as hard anymore. The tsunami of emotional turmoil, however, showed no signs of letting up.
“Sorry you had to do this,” Jake said after a few minutes. He fought back tears, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “I didn’t mean to...you know.”
“Suffer a panic attack?”
“I was gonna say freak the hell out and cry all over you, but sure.”
“There’s no need to apologize. You were not in control of the situation. Blaming yourself would be foolish.”
“Still. You shouldn’t’ve had to do this. I would’ve figured it out.”
“I beg to differ.”
Under normal circumstances, there was no way in hell Jake would have let that slip by. But his brain was fried. He was so tired. All he wanted to do was take a nap.
And so he did, for several minutes, head lolling against Holt’s shoulder as the beginning stages of sleep overtook him. It wasn’t until Holt began to slowly pull away from him that Jake jolted back into awareness. The last tendrils of terror and dread were fading, leaving only a moderate sense of anxiety in their place.
Jake reluctantly dropped his hands from the Captain’s arms and lifted his head from the man’s shoulder. He had no real reason to be clinging to Holt anymore (or so he tried to tell himself, at least. He was actually about two seconds away from crying again and there was nothing in the world he wanted more than a good hug. It was more accurate to say he was mortified by his own touchy-feely nature, and the ordeal in general, and wanted it all to be over with as soon as possible.)
“Well, uh...” Jake cleared his throat, rolled his shoulders, and cracked his neck. “Thanks...bruh. Dude. Man. I’m good. You can go now.”
Holt sat perfectly still in front of him. He continued to stare right at Jake, unblinking. Even in his usual, emotionless state, Jake could see the you’ve got to be shitting me quality in the look his boss was giving him.
“You’re in no state to be alone,” Holt said, and goddamn if Jake didn’t cringe so hard at those words. “We can either call Santiago to drive you home or I’ll do it myself.”
“I can drive,” Jake interjected quickly. He tried to quash the heart palpitations creeping their way back in. The last thing he needed was for everyone in the precinct to see him being escorted home like a kid faking sick to get out of school. “People are gonna stare if you leave with me. Or if Amy leaves with me, because you know she’ll baby me.”
Jake actually had no qualms with the idea of Amy babying him in that moment. He’d had a pretty hellish day. Amy letting him watch Die Hard, eat ice cream, and curl up with his head in her lap didn’t sound too terrible.
It was more the principle of the thing. The principle being that he wasn’t actually an infant in need of coddling.
“You think too lowly of your team,” Holt said. Jake knew it was actually the other way around; he worried obsessively that his team thought lowly of him.
Holt continued, “And you worry far too much that they think lowly of you. I know for a fact they don’t.”
Well, damn. Hit every nail on the head, why don’t you.
These reassurances did very little to reassure him. Jake was a long ways past platitudes. He’d just gotten his nasty, salty, panic-ridden tear water all over the Captain of the precinct. It was too horrifying a situation for any platitude to soothe.
(Jake did latch on to the quiet voice in the back of his head reminding him that Holt was his friend, too, not just his boss. It was difficult. Just like the part of him that knew Amy was sticking around for a long, long time was also very hard to believe some days, though it got marginally easier every time.)
He ignored Holt’s comments about the squad. That wasn’t a conversation they needed to have.
“Call Amy in here first,” Jake blurted out the second the idea hit his head. At least he was blurting out a good idea this time. “Tell her you have to discuss some...important matters, or whatever, in the briefing room. Let her be a mother hen in here and get it out of her system.”
Holt nodded, a single eyebrow raised. He seemed mildly impressed with the improvisation. Whether his surprise should have been taken as a compliment or an insult...the jury was out. Jake was far too exhausted to run that mental race, anyway.
“I suppose I’ll go and get her, then.”
If Jake felt a mild upsurge of anxiety when he was left alone in the room, no one else really needed to know.
Amy did, indeed, smother him the second Holt closed the door to the briefing room and informed her that there really was no filing emergency and in fact her paramour was sitting on the floor, hidden behind a table, recovering from a bad panic attack. And though Jake secretly loved the fact that not-his-dad-but-kinda-his-dad-Captain Holt was willing to comfort him in a moment of extreme mental unease, nothing could really compare to Amy’s soft hands stroking his hair, cupping his face, soothing him instantly with their feather-light touch.
And nothing could ever beat her kind whisper in his ear, asking him if he was okay, if he needed anything, if he knew how much she loved him (spoiler alert: apparently it was a whole lot.)
Amy was no stranger to anxiety herself, and Jake was no stranger to comforting her in her moments of weakness. And as much as Jake loved her soothing touch on his skin, grounding him to reality, having the tables flipped was somewhat uncomfortable. Jake liked being able to help the person he loved. Accepting help and love for himself, on the other hand, was a troublesome concept. His first and strongest instinct was to make a big joke of it all, make Amy laugh like he did when she was the one recovering from her brain’s unnecessary hurdles, and essentially lock this memory up in a box in his head where it could live in peace.
It was an instinct Jake had felt, and followed, for as long as he could remember. Something in the back of his mind whispered that he wasn’t worthy of the love and concern of other people. He liked to think he’d been getting better about that since he and Amy started dating; he was more than willing to accept her comfort in their privacy of their own homes, at least. You know...as long as it was wordless stuff, like her fingers in his hair, or his head on her shoulder, or her lips pressing soft kisses against his temple.
But when she – or anybody, really – verbally expressed any kind of care for his well-being, all Jake wanted to do was backpedal into oblivion, laugh it all off, make them laugh, do anything to ease the serious nature of the exchange. Being faced with somebody else’s concern, for him of all people, was overwhelmingly awkward.
Every piece of Jake ached to let go and trust his friends would catch him. He always caught them, after all. But some pieces couldn’t help but wonder if his vulnerability secretly disgusted people. It was better to err on the side of the caution, which was something he had never actually thought in his life except for in these moments.
Holt left the two of them alone to let Jake get himself together, but not before placing a firm hand on the detective’s shoulder and telling him to call if either of them needed anything. Jake forced a thankful smile, trying to ignore the burning blush of shame he felt on the tips of his ears. He was never going to live this day down.
People did stare as they left, just like Jake thought they would, even though he and Amy moved casually enough and pretended to talk about his dead-end case. Amy personally thought he was being ridiculous trying to hide such an important aspect of his health and safety from the people who were basically his family at this point, and she had no qualms voicing that to him. But she begrudgingly agreed when she saw the genuine spark of fear in his eyes.
When they got home, Amy did not force him to talk. She comforted him in the exact way Jake had imagined she would, because they just knew each other that well. Within three hours, he was curled up on the couch with his head in her lap, two empty ice cream bowls on the coffee table, trying to stave off the exhaustion making his eyes droop as the Die Hard credits rolled down the screen.
That’s not to say they didn’t talk about it. They did. But for once, Amy didn’t initiate it. Jake surprised both of them when he told her, “I just feel really stupid.”
He saw Amy do a double take from the screen to her boyfriend, squinting down at him.
“What?” She asked quietly. “Why do you feel stupid?”
“I was too stupid to remember that appointment,” he clarified. “It’s my fault I don’t have any medicine. And now I’m blowing up and having meltdowns at work because I can’t function like a normal human being without some pills giving me a mental boost. It’s stupid. So I feel...stupid.”
“First of all, your meds do not give you a ‘boost’,” Amy said firmly. “They -”
“Yeah, yeah, they ‘bring me closer to a baseline of executive function that neurotypical people don’t need medicine to achieve’, they ‘even the playing field’, I know.”
Jake rolled from his side onto his back, facing her instead of the screen, only to find her positively beaming down at him.
“Aw, you read the articles I sent you!” She said joyfully. “I told you those would help.”
“You were right,” he said, offering his own small smile. She always was.
“But more importantly, you’re definitely not stupid.” Her smile faded slightly, a sad kind of look darkening her eyes, and Jake felt horrible knowing he’d made her feel that. He shouldn’t have said anything. It wasn’t her job to patch up his emotional wounds. She gently combed her fingers through his hair and ran the back of her knuckles down the side of his face, and Jake blinked back tears for what felt like the hundredth time that day. “I can’t make you believe that, but I’m going to keep saying it until you do, and then I’m going to keep saying it so you never forget.”
“You’re perfect,” Jake mumbled, sniffling slightly as he turned his head to bury his face against her stomach. The smell of her laundry detergent lingering on her shirt was a familiar comfort. “Why are you so nice? I love you so much.”
She laughed a little at that, which eased some of the guilt weighing on his chest. Making her laugh was his comfort zone. He loved hearing her laugh.
“I love you, too,” Amy said. “Don’t act like this isn’t anything you don’t do for me. You’ve always helped me with my anxiety. You deserve help, too, Jake.”
“I’ve got a shitload of issues, way more than you, so the comforter-to-comfortee balance here really isn’t fair to you at all,” he said against the fabric of her shirt. Jake practically felt her eyes rolling in the back of her head and smiled slightly, nuzzling his nose against her.
“You and your neurology are a package deal,” Amy reasoned in a playful tone. She nudged her elbow against his side. “And you’re definitely worth any strings attached.”
Somehow, that became a tiny bit easier to believe every time she said it. Amy was a horrible liar. She definitely didn’t sound like she was lying.
“You’re just trying to make me cry today,” Jake said. He pouted up at her, watching her teasing smile grow.
“Maybe I’m a sexual sadist,” she whispered way too dramatically. Jake raised a single eyebrow, sitting up with re-energized interest.
“Do go on.”
Amy lifted one of the corner pillows off her couch and whacked him square in the face. The resulting pillow fight was, above all else, so very worth it.