It Takes Time

8

Aizawa knew that he had fucked up. He knew that he should have just let her go, that he shouldn't have been there confronting her husband. He should have just let it all go. It was stupid and it potentially put her in more danger than she was already in, either way. He wouldn't have been surprised if she had to quit her job or if she would have been on sick leave for a week or two. He was an idiot.

He didn't even know why he had gone so far. He never should have let his feelings get the better of him. But she had looked so worried, and she was leaving so quickly, and he just didn't want all this for her. He didn't want her to go back to her abusive husband, he didn't want her to have to live like this.

But he knew that he had made a mistake. He was all the more surprised when he saw her in the hallway the next week, acting as if everything was fine and as if everything was completely normal. Of course, she was also wearing a huge amount of makeup. Aizawa didn't even have to ask about it. He knew she was covering up bruises. And if he asked, she wasn't going to admit to anything either way.

Aizawa wanted to help her, badly. But it seemed like she didn't want any help. He knew that this was common when it came to victims of domestic abuse. That it was hard to leave a partner, abusive or not. But it was still frustrating for him, no matter how much he told himself that it wasn't up to him to get her out of that situation. He wasn't sure what to do, but he knew that he should apologise to her.

But once again, he needed to wait for a pretext to head into the office, to deliver some sort of paperwork or whatever. And he'd have to hope that Mariko wasn't there. But if he remembered correctly, she was out sick today, so Y/N was holding down the entire operation by herself. Aizawa hoped that he would be able to get to talk to her. He knew he had to tread carefully after that last episode.

But then he finally got some signed reports back that he could bring downstairs to the office. He normally did those things during the breaks, but today he actually took some time out of his class to go downstairs right away. He knew that his students were probably wondering what was going on with him.

He had been distracted all day and he hadn't been in a great mood, which meant that his students got away with putting in less effort, because he just couldn't be bothered to be strict with them. It was actually in the best interest of his students, if he was miserable. But he could see that they were pretty nervous about him not being his usual self. That was what he got for being so stoic all the damn time.

Either way, he couldn't really be bothered to care about that right now. He left the kids to their own devices and gave them some work to do, while he made his way down to the office, so he could talk to Y/N. He was getting pretty nervous about what to say to her. He hadn't really made a plan for this; he was just going to improvise. But now that he was getting closer and closer to the office, he was getting nervous.

He remembered this weird kind of anxiety from the few relationships he had in the past – it had always been like that when there was something important, he had to talk about or when he was asking a woman out on a date or anything like that. Aizawa hated feeling this nervous and helpless. Maybe that was why he was more or less anti-social – because people were so unpredictable, and he didn't like it when things were too unpredictable. It made him nervous; it forced him to improvise things without a plan and that was something he wasn't very good at. Especially when it wasn't related to hero work.

Aizawa took a deep breath, just as much without a plan as he had been earlier, before knocking at the door to the office. He hoped that Y/N was in. He hoped that she wasn't too angry with him after everything he had done. He really hoped that he hadn't just destroyed whatever little bit of friendship was left between them. He could deal with her being married to someone else or not being interested in him, but he would hate if they just... wouldn't talk to each other anymore. It would be sad.