7 with Mikko!!!
7. “Can I just lay on your chest? The sound of your heartbeat always helps calm me down.” [722 words]
It wasn’t the burned meatloaf that caused tears to stream down your cheeks. Rather, it was the culmination of seemingly every little thing going wrong that had you falling apart on your kitchen floor. You’d forgotten to pay a bill on time, you were behind on all of the work you needed to do with deadlines looming over you, you had spilled your cats food all over the floor the previous night because the lid hadn’t been on all the way, you’d woken up to flat tires and then proceeded to be yelled at by another customer when you were trying to do your grocery shopping. The grocery shopping that was supposed to feed you and a friend tonight if you hadn’t forgotten to set a timer and burned your dinner.
It was as you were sobbing on the kitchen floor that you heard a knock on your door and when you didn’t respond after a minute, the door crept open, Mikko calling out for you. The last thing you wanted was for him to find you like this...the two of you honestly weren’t close enough for that but there wasn’t much you could do about it now, your breathing too shaky to control.
When Mikko found you, he immediately crouched down beside you in concern, his nose only then picking up on the smell of burnt food. Still, somehow he knew that this breakdown was caused by so much more than that and he quickly reached out a hand to pull you to your feet, ushering you over to your couch. As you melted into the cushions, tears still streaming down your cheeks you could hear Mikko in the other room calling in a takeout order before doing his best to clean up the mess you’d made.
You weren’t sure how much time had passed before he returned to you, sitting down beside you.
“What can I do?” He questioned, the soft tone of his voice slightly jarring. For some reason you expected him to be disappointed with you. The whole reason he was coming over was for a home-cooked meal and you couldn’t even manage to give him that. There wasn’t any tinge of disappointment or anger in his tone of voice though, only concern for you. Your brain was still racing as you searched for a way to calm yourself down. In your frazzled state, the only thing that came to mind was how safe you felt when Mikko hugged you and your head rested against the broad expanse of his chest. Still...you weren’t sure the two of you were close enough for you to make that request and so you hesitated in saying the words until Mikko’s hand brushed over your knee in an attempt to draw you back to him.
“Can I just lay on your chest? The sound of your heartbeat always helps calm me down.” Looking down at you, Mikko’s gaze went soft and he quickly leaned back against the couch cushions, pulling your body closer to his own.
“Of course...come ‘ere.” He murmured, his fingers carding through your hair as he guided your head onto his chest. With the sound of his heart beating in your ear and the feeling of his fingers running through your hair, you finally felt your breathing slow and your heart rate reduce. It wasn’t until you had steadied yourself that Mikko spoke again, though he refused to let you move off of him. “I’d ask what happened but I feel like this was probably something that was building and just exploded inside you tonight. So instead I’ll just ask if you’re okay? We’ll lay like this until dinner comes and then we can open a bottle of wine and watch a movie.”
Assuring him that you would be okay, you stayed cuddled together until your food arrived and then spend the rest of the night exactly how Mikko had described. It felt like something had shifted between the two of you, but you weren’t sure of exactly what that shift was or what it meant for your friendship moving forward. Dwelling on that would just send you into another panic so instead, you would just have to take it for what it was and cross that bridge if and when you came to it.