can’t get out of it-Jack Abbot
summary ! Jack doesn’t know how to help his wife through depression.
warnings ! 18+ MDNI depression, anxiety, angst, sadness, bedrotting, and thoughts/mentions of self-harm and sui**de
pairing: Jack abbot x fem!wife!reader
if you or someone you know is struggling with mental health or thinking about harming themselves or others, call 988 to speak to a crisis counselor. Use your recourses and remember you aren’t alone 🤍
It started off slow, you had never fully let him see this side of you. You thought you could tame it, keep it bottled up. But he started to notice the way you got quieter and didn’t want to do anything. Tonight was when he truly he realized, you called out of work for a week and all you were doing was laying in bed, at first Jack thought it was silent protest and that you were mad so he slept on the couch.
He stood in the doorway of the bedroom, watching the room fall into shadows as the late afternoon light faded away into darkness. He had just finished cooking dinner for you on his night off and wanted to try and get you to eat. You were tucked under the blue duvet, staring blankly at the wall, he could see the slow rise and fall of your chest through the blanket. The silence was heavy, broken only by the soft hum of the ceiling fan. His heart sank as he stepped closer.
You hadn’t even noticed he was in the room. He’s waiting for you to say something, to give him a single clue about how to help you. But the room feels like it’s underwater, and you can barely even hear your own thoughts through the static.
It hit him all at once, the way you'd been canceling on their friends, how you stopped listening to your favorite podcasts, and the tired, empty look in your eyes that you tried to hide with a weak smile whenever your eyes met his. The vibrant, laughing person he knew had slipped behind a wall of sheer emotional exhaustion, completely depleted. He didn’t know how to help, let alone bring it up to you.
He slowly walked over to the bed sitting on the side of it. That’s when you looked at him for the first time all day.
Your eyes gave it away first. They’re open, but barely, like keeping your lids up took too much actual effort you didn’t have in you. The skin underneath is smudged a dull purple color, and you blink slow, as if every blink could be the one you don’t come back from. Your face looks heavier somehow. The corners of your mouth are pulled down, not in a frown, just dropped, like the muscles forgot how to hold them up.
Your skin is pale around your nose and forehead, but your cheeks have that worn, flushed look you get when you’ve been running on nothing for too long.
You’re here, but he can tell you’re somewhere else too. Somewhere quieter, where you don’t have to be awake or present. He took in you frail appearance and gently moved a strand of hair out of your face.
“You hungry?” He asked quietly. “I made dinner sweetheart.” He said gently hoping that you would want to eat with him instead of this being his third meal alone.
You debated it in your head, you calculated how much energy you had even though you’ve been lying in bed all day. How much energy it would take you to get up and eat at the table seemed to make your brain short circuit. But you couldn’t help but look at him and feel guilty. Because it wasn’t his fault that you were mentally stuck. It wasn’t his fault in the slightest and maybe that’s why simply being around him hurt.
“Okay..I’ll be out there in a second.” You mutter your voice practically a whisper as your eyes left his staring back at that one spot on the wall.
He didn’t want to bargain or push you to get up right away. He wished he could just shake the answers out of you and figure out what’s wrong for himself. But he couldn’t. So with a small, quiet nod, he got up stepping out of the room. He sat himself at the table in front of his plate staring at yours next to his praying you would come out.
You lied still debating on whether to push yourself and get the hell up or wallow in self pity. You couldn’t keep doing this to him, you knew you couldn’t. So slowly you tried to get up.
Gravity has a cruel way of multiplying every time you try to get up or even roll over. Every muscle feels anchored to the mattress by invisible iron weights, making the simple act of sitting up a monumental, exhausting chore. Your eyelids are impossibly heavy. A bone-deep exhaustion radiates behind them. You finally swing your legs over the side of the bed, planting your feet on the cold floor, but the physical heaviness is quickly eclipsed by an emotional hollow as you wish you could just rot into the bed.
You were in the same shorts and oversized hoodie from your college years, for the past couple of days. Yeah you showered but you couldn’t say you washed your hair or even cared to shave.
You slowly walked out of the room tucking your hair behind your ears, when you made it down the hallway you saw him sitting at the table. Your plate right next to his made your heart ache, has he been doing this all week? He had a faint smile when he saw you finally come out and sit down in the chair next to him with your plate of pasta in front of you. Even though you couldn’t bear the thought of eating, you just wanted to reassure him.
“Glad you joined me..I’ve missed you.” He said before taking a bite of his food. You fidgeted with your nail beds, avoiding looking at him.
“I’m right here.” You huffed out trying to make it seem like he was being unreasonable. But he wasn’t. He was merely trying to get answers or some sort of understanding.
“Baby i-i know that. Just feels like you’ve been hiding in that room. Hiding yourself away.” He claimed setting his fork down as his eyes never left you.
“Jack-I’m not hiding okay? Im-“ You paused searching for the words, your tone was bitter-almost rude and defensive. “I’m just tired.” You said glancing at him for a second.
“Well at least eat something..” He said giving up entirely on trying to get answers seeming your walls were completely up.
So by the end of the week when nothing had changed he had no idea what to do.
Every day felt like he was standing on a fragile bridge, terrified that the wrong step, the wrong question, or the wrong tone will make it all collapse. He wants to fix it. He wants to tell you everything will be okay, but he knows you can't hear that right now. Instead, he finds himself researching therapists late at night on the couch that has temporarily became his bed to give you space, reading forum threads where others share this exact quiet, helpless ache. He’s learned the hard way that unsolicited advice just makes you pull away.
It’s a constant, agonizing balancing act between wanting to carry the world for you on his shoulders, and knowing he just needs to be a steady presence to lean on without burning out himself.
After all he’s still juggling the ED, SWAT, and now trying to figure out how to get you out of this grey area. The only person he can talk to about it is Robby. So that’s what he does. One morning while you’re still asleep he goes into the garage dialing Robby’s number. He paces back and forth waiting with a frustrated “come on man” until he finally answered.
“Hello?” Robby answered into the phone.
“Hey man-listen I need your advice on something.” Jack said holding the phone to his ear.
“Yeah sure, shoot.” Robby quipped.
“I-how do you help someone who’s struggling at the bottom..” Jack said quietly as of it speaking it out loud would burn him.
“Jack, what’s going on brother?” Robby asked concerned.
“My wife she-“ Jack couldn’t even finish before his eyes started watering. “She’s going through something, depression I think. She won’t get out of bed Micheal.” Jack choked out his hand scrubbing over his jaw to stop him from crying.
The line went quiet for a couple moments.
“You need to show her you’re real, that you’re not leaving just because she’s in a grey area. Come on, you’ve seen it in so many phych patients. She doesn’t want to talk to you because she probably cant handle the emotions or feeling like a burden.” Robby said.
“She’s not a psych patient-she’s my wife. I just don’t want to push her even further away from me.” Jack muttered rubbing his eyes.
“She won’t, don’t jump at her. Just show her you’re there quietly without saying it out loud-“ That’s when Robby was cut off by Dana yelling at him about patient nonsense. “Listen man, if you need to talk to me about it more, just call me, but right now I gotta go. Trauma calls.” Robby ranted.
“Yeah-yeah, I will, thanks man.” Jack said quickly before hanging up.
Robby wasn’t wrong, but he also wasn’t entirely right.
So by the next week, the shame of doing nothing was suffocating. Sensing the episode, he didn't try to pull you out of bed like he had been trying to do over and over again. Instead, he brought a piece of the world to you. He cracked the bedroom window an inch, letting the cool autumn air cut through the staleness of the room trying to remind you that the world was still real-that he was real too. He sat at the foot of the bed with two bowls of soup.
He didn't force you to sit up or engage in heavy conversation with him. He just ate his dinner quietly, threw out a random, low-stake joke about a patient he dealt with earlier in the day, and left a warm mug of tea on your nightstand.
For the first time in days, you took a sip.
The next evening you decided to really push yourself and take a real shower. The first step into the shower feels like breaking the surface of the water after drowning. For the past two weeks, your skin has felt like a physical record of your depression and anxiety-heavy, oily, and thick with the scent of the bed sheets you couldn’t leave, let alone change. As the hot water hits your chest, it is a shock to your nervous system, so intense it almost stings, but the relief is instant. You just stand there under the warm stream for the first five minutes, letting the water run over your face and hair, watching the invisible weight of the past week literally wash down the drain making you feel a bit more alive.
The shampoo working into your scalp feels like a painful, beautiful exorcism. You scrub with an urgency that borders on desperate, using your nails to break through the buildup, watching the suds before rinsing clean. When you finally lather the body wash over your skin, washing away the sweat of a dozen panic attacks and endless hours of tossing and turning, you feel human again. You step out of the steam, shivering slightly in the cool bathroom air, and you take a look in the mirror.
Your skin is raw and your hair is dripping, and for the first time in a weeks, you recognize the person looking back at you.
When you entered the bedroom you saw Jack taking off all the bed sheets, duvet covers, and pillow cases. At first you were confused but you didn’t want to overthink it, so you walked straight to the dresser getting out clothes. You got out a new pair of shorts and an oversized t-shirt.
“Im gonna wash the bedding for you, I’ll get you a different blanket for the meantime.” He says softly walking up to you with all the bedding. He doesn’t say anything, just kisses your forehead gently before walking off.
He didn’t even wait for you to respond, he just went straight to the washer throwing in the bedding as you got dressed. He came back into the room with multiple blankets, you were sitting on the bed with you legs crossed on the verge of tears because you couldn’t get the knots out of your hair. He noticed, he set the blankets down next to you and quietly sat behind you. He grabbed the hairbrush from your lap and as you were too tired to even hold your own head up. The weight of the day presses down on your shoulders and it’s like he can visibly see the tension in your muscles, but his hands are incredibly light as he gathers your hair.
He doesn't ask you to explain why you can’t do this on your own. He just breathes softly above you and starts at the very tips of your strands brushing gently. He works centimeter by centimeter, untangling the knots from the bottom up, he learned how to untangle women’s hair from having to do it for his sister. The only sounds are the soft sweep of the bristles and his steady, calming breath. His fingers occasionally brush against your neck, warm and grounding almost.
You close your eyes and let yourself completely go limp against his touch, safe in the quiet space he is creating for you.
You didn’t even realize he’d finished brushing your hair, because now you are leaning back against him with your head resting on his shoulders. Every fiber of your being screams at yourself to turn around, to bury your face in his chest and just let him hold you. You know he loves you. You know he genuinely wants to be here, to carry some of this crushing weight. But looking at him, seeing the concern and the sadness in his eyes, you are suddenly hit with this overwhelming, suffocating wave of guilt.
You feel like a broken thing that will just ruin whatever you touch. The voice in your head gets louder, whispering that he deserves so much better than this lifeless version of yourself. He deserves a partner who can laugh with him, who can engage, who isn't a constant source of worry.
So, you do the only thing you feel capable of doing. You push him away.
“I think i’m gonna go to sleep.” You whispered.
He doesn’t say anything. Just a simple nod as he shuffles off the bed walking out of the room.
Hearing the rejection in your own words makes the guilt burn even hotter in your throat. You know you’re hurting him by pushing him away. You can hear the sigh he lets out, the quiet heartbreak in his quiet shuffle as he eventually stands up and walks out of the bedroom. The shame of what you’ve just done sits heavy on your chest. You want to apologize, to run after him and explain that it’s not him, it's just the black hole inside your own brain that’s makes all these decisions for you.
But the fatigue is paralyzing, and the fear that you are simply a burden is far stronger than your ability to cope.
The main reason you couldn’t find yourself opening up to him is because of the guilt. The guilt of speaking your own pain out loud feels heavier than the depression itself. When you look at him, you don’t just see your husband. You see a man who survived the absolute worst of humanity during the war, who carries scars both visible and invisible that you will never truly understand. Next to his trauma, your emptiness feels incredibly small, selfish, and deeply unearned.
How dare you complain about feeling hopeless when he has stared real, horrific devastation in the face and managed to keep moving forward? He has already carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. He deserves a peaceful home and a strong partner, not a wife who adds to his emotional burden with problems you can't even fully explain or understand yourself. Even though he loves you, a terrifying part of you worries that if you tell him you’re drowning, he will look at you and think your struggles are trivial compared to what he went through.
By the time the next night rolled around he had had enough. He had enough of you pushing him away and he couldn’t deal with you pushing him out anymore. He walked into the room to see you just laying on your side staring at the wall.
“Can we talk?” He asked closing the door behind him.
“I don’t know…I’m tired and-“
“No. No-you’re not shutting me out again.” He said cutting you off as he stepped closer into your eyes line
“I’m not shutting me you out Jack-“
“Yes you are, for the past three weeks you have pushed me away in every way possible.” He said firmly standing his ground. There was no way for you to escape this. You slowly sat up bringing your knees to your chest.
“What do you want me to say? That I’m mental? You shouldn’t have to deal with that-“ You choked out.
“So what!” He said, he wasn’t yelling, his voice was slightly raised but not in anger.
“So what?” You repeated confused and hurt thinking maybe you were right-he doesn’t care. But that was farthest from the truth.
“So it’s not gonna be easy it’s gonna be really hard.” He said stepping closer as he knees hit the bed. “We’re gonna have to work at this everyday, but I want to do that because I want you. I want you for a lifetime and this doesn’t change anything for me.”
You sat there, watching the frustration finally break through his usual patience. He took a deep breath, looked straight into your eyes, and spoke with a raw honesty he hadn’t shown before.
"I am done letting you slip away every time things get heavy, I know we haven’t been through this together before-but I’m here. I love you, I love you so much, and I am not going anywhere, so stop trying to force me out every time I try and get close. Every single time you get overwhelmed, you pull back, you shut down, and you build this wall like you're protecting me, or yourself from something. But marriage, a relationship, us-it means we handle the dark stuff together. I’m fed up with playing this game where I have to guess if you’re going to let me in today.
I’ve seen too many people die because they don’t speak up about getting the help that they so desperately need. I’ve lived through loosing so many friends over the years because nobody was truly there for them. I will not-will not! Let that happen to you. I don’t care how messy it gets, and I don't care if you think you're a burden. You aren't. Not to me.
I chose you, completely, and that means I chose to be here for the hard parts too. I am not going to let you struggle alone anymore. I’m staying right here, and we are going to figure this out together, because you are my wife and I vowed through sickness and in health that I’d be with you every step of the way. So this is me trying to do that for you because I couldn’t imagine a world without you."
Your heart hammered against your ribs, the sheer force of his words leaving you completely exposed. The wall of defense you had spent weeks carefully building up didn't just crack. It shattered right in front of him. For the first few seconds, you couldn't even breathe. A wave of fierce defensiveness flared up inside you, and your instinct was to snap back, to find a reason to run to the other room just to escape the intensity of his gaze.
But as you looked at the fierce determination in his eyes, the anger melted into pure, terrifying vulnerability. You felt exposed, stripped of your armor, and incredibly small. The tears came before you could stop them, hot and blurring your vision. It was a suffocating mix of immense relief and profound guilt. You hadn't realized just how much your emotional absence was hurting him.
Your throat tightened so hard you could barely breathe normally, but the heavy weight in your chest finally started to lift. You didn't reach out immediately, but for the first time in months, you didn't back away either. You just sat there, completely undone, finally letting him see the mess you had been trying so hard to hide as he moved to hold you in his arms.
this is so loosely based off my mental health while being in a relationship :( if you have experienced this, I’m proud you are here. 🤍 don’t push away the people who truly love you.
