Chapter Text
You pushed the cart down the aisle heading straight to the produce section. You hadn't gone grocery shopping in a long time (the blankets clung to you every time you thought about getting up and doing something with yourself), so you needed to stock up on as much as possible to avoid starving to death for a while.
As you walked around, you scanned the list: Carrots, potatoes, onion, broccoli, tomatoes...
Tomatoes. And, as if it were a joke, they were half off...
Before, naturally, you would have grabbed four or five bags — you know, Izuku was a tomato addict, the greatest and only tomato lover you had ever known, and he always asked for too many for the week. You know... tomato-based dishes, cream of tomato soup, oven-roasted tomatoes, sautéed tomatoes, eggs with tomatoes... Tomato salad with salt, pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil.
Before, seeing those discounts, he would have grabbed at least ten bags of tomatoes and it would have been an annoying, tomato-filled week... Eating tomatoes all the time... You once caught him making a tomato and apple smoothie and banned him from using the blender for a while...
Alright, let's address the elephant in the room.
Fifteen years of knowing each other, thirteen years as a couple, and ten years married... You'd think you'd know everything about someone after that much time, that much intimacy and connection... Yet life loves its surprises — look at it from his perspective. You're a happily married thirty-year-old man with a great career, but, because there's always a but, you start feeling like you've wasted your life... The intimacy with your wife feels empty, and sometimes you find yourself surrounded by young people, young girls who seem to urgently need your attention and your touch...
You gave in once, one damn time... And guess what — your wife caught you in the act, because your moans are very distinctive when you finish, and because you definitely know how to make someone feel good...
Yes, that's how you ruin a marriage and a relationship that took years and years of connection, intimacy, and trust.
Sometimes you laugh when you remember the look on Izuku's face when you walked into the room — he looked like a scared little rabbit, like a child caught doing something wrong... And sometimes you want to beat his face purple when you remember how he came up with a thousand and one excuses for why he did it and how he said he only meant to do it once and that was it... Ha, sure, once and that's it — as if anyone cared that you never got to see what your face looked like before you found out... Imagine No.1 cheating on his wife once and then coming back into her arms like nothing happened — totally poetic...
You regret the reaction you had, not because you destroyed everything and threw him out right then and there — on the contrary, you regret not doing that — it's because you froze. You could only stand there watching him scramble for anything valid to patch up the blow, but it was too late, it was like trying to rebuild a skyscraper with a little faith and some tape.
Maybe if you had done that, it wouldn't have hurt so much afterward...
After that, he tried to fix things in every possible way. He wouldn't let you lift a finger — you wouldn't take the slightest bit of trouble for yourself anymore, because he was doing it for you, and that was the worst part. How can someone who's already the perfect husband become even more perfect... He did everything. Was there not enough time for you before? Fine, fewer hours at work. Are you tired? Fine, he'd give you a massage and draw you a relaxing bath. Do you want sex? Fine, they'd have sex every day you wanted it. Did you feel insecure about him? Fine, you had all his passwords written on a sheet of paper stuck to the fridge so you could check all his interactions. Did the marriage not seem to be working? Fine, he found a great couples therapist who was available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week... There were so few things that you didn't even notice until you really sat down and thought about it...
A desperate man trying to fix his marriage, having destroyed it beyond repair — and it only took him three months to realize it. It was like trying to keep an old, cracked statue standing; at first it works, but at some point it has to fall.
The divorce finally came when you found out he was still seeing the girl he had cheated with from the beginning... Quite the charmer.
By that point he didn't even bother with excuses — he was self-aware enough to know he had ruined his marriage and that there was no possibility in the universe of undoing his actions.
He was the one who placed the divorce papers on the table himself. He gave you a full lecture on how sorry he was, that you deserved someone better, and that he would keep loving you no matter what...
Oh, and of course he gave you more than half of everything he had — please, he was the damn number one, he'd get it all back within a year at most. Along with that came a confidentiality agreement he had you sign right after signing the divorce papers — an agreement stating that he needed discretion, that when the media found out they had divorced, it would be presented as something that happened simply because the love ran out, a peaceful separation of the kind that happens naturally between long-standing marriages, and not for any other reasons... Because God forbid the world find out that the beloved, fabulous, and adored number one was a filthy, repulsive cheater who needed to protect his controversial image by giving his wife a direct and slightly indirect bribe to keep her completely silent. You now had a fortune that would last at least five generations — but at what cost...
You think he might have been crying when he signed the divorce papers. That day he was very quiet, head hung low. Those were the longest seconds of your life, and then you simply went home.
The good thing is you kept the apartment. The bad thing is you kept the apartment. On one hand, it meant you wouldn't have to find somewhere else to stay — you remained in a perfect place where no one would try to squeeze money out of you, because whether you liked it or not, the luxurious life you used to share wasn't coming out of your own pocket. But on the other hand, you had to watch men come and go from the apartment, taking some of Izuku's things — some, because he didn't take his couch, his TV, the desk in his study...
Maybe it was because he wasn't going to need them — he could buy new ones later — or maybe because he didn't want you to have to buy your own things, meaning you'd be erasing his presence from your life, and that was the last thing he needed.
The only things he made sure to take were the wedding memories — the framed photos, the album, the files, the records... Who knows what for. Any naive person might believe he did it because he wanted to remember the good times they shared, when the love was genuine and innocent. But with your experience, believing the earth was flat was easier...
Who knows — Izuku Midoriya is a sentimental idiot who thinks too much about the things that made him happy...
Your mind let go of its thoughts. You came back to the aisle, surrounded by fruits and vegetables on display, blinding white lights above you, the clean and homey smell of disinfectant on the polished floor. You grabbed a bag and started placing some tomatoes inside — after all, oven-roasted tomatoes were an absolute wonder, and you had to make something of that — so you tied the bag, put it in the cart, and moved on to the rest of the vegetables...
You needed to breathe a little...