#mhatimeskip

Author’s Note

eeeek!! Okay this is my first fic and I worked really hard on it and care way too much. Weekly updates. (hopefully!) Long Form because I don't know how to not include every single thought I have into a story apparently.

This is a post-canon continuation fic eight-year time skip story that begins the moment Deku learns the truth, and realizes the last eight years were never empty at all. They were full of someone else’s quiet devotion, carried silently, deliberately, without expectation of recognition. Bakugo and Izuku have always been part of each other’s lives, but adulthood, trauma, and time have changed the way they orbit. The story focuses on reconnection into slice of life.

A few notes going in:

This fic is written in alternating first-person POV (Bakugo / Deku). Each chapter stays fully inside one character’s head.

Slow, emotional, and character-driven. Lots of internal monologue, dialogue, memory, and quiet moments.

PTSD, survivor’s guilt, and war aftermath are explored gradually and honestly, including therapy later on.

Romance is intentional, soft, and earned. Physical intimacy appears later and only where it makes emotional sense.

Izuku is a teacher at U.A. at the start of the story. Bakugo is a Pro Hero

Updates are planned weekly, with longer chapters that sometimes span multiple parts.

This is a story about what happens after. Its about endurance, choice, and finding home in someone who’s always known your name.

Thank you for reading and if you hate it just lie to me hehehe 💥💚

CHAPTER ONE: THE WEIGHT OF IT

(DEKU POV)

2.4k words

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“Why did you do this?”

The words are out of my mouth before I realize I’ve decided to say them, which feels fitting, honestly, because that’s been the theme of my life, it seems.

Kacchan doesn’t answer right away.

We’re standing in a UA hallway. You can hear the noise of our friends and classmates in the room beside us. They threw me an after party that feels like a reunion. Just an hour ago I was flying through the city with my old friends. Once again.

He’s more relaxed than I remember. Or maybe I’m just more aware of it now. The energy he radiates. The way he stands like he’s prepared but content.

“Izuku,” he says finally, and my brain short circuits just a little because he says my name like that now. Careful. Deliberate. Like he’s still getting used to the shape of it. “I’m not having this conversation in the hallway.”

Oh. So he knows this is a conversation. So I wasn’t imagining the weight of it pressing on my ribs the second All Might handed me the suit and smiled like he was passing on a second torch instead of detonating my entire understanding of the last eight years.

“Okay,” I say too quickly. “Okay. That’s... fine. We can...”

Kacchan exhales through his nose, sharp but controlled, and gestures with his chin toward the exit. “Come on.”

We walk.

The silence between us isn’t hostile. It’s worse than that. It’s dense. Familiar. Silence that comes from knowing each other too well and not knowing how to speak without hitting something raw and explosive.

I can’t stop thinking about the suit.

It’s heavy in a way that has nothing to do with its actual weight. It’s the knowledge. The understanding that didn’t land all at once but in slow, sickening pieces.

Eight years.

Eight years of my life that I thought were quiet. Separate. Ordinary in the way adulthood pretends to be when you survive something catastrophic and then everyone moves on. What else could we do? It’s natural to lose touch after graduating, anyways. I tell myself often.

I get into Kacchan’s car without thinking. He drives with hands steady on the wheel, eyes forward, jaw tight. The radio is off. Of course it is.

“How long,” I say, because if I don’t ask now I might not be able to later, “were you planning to keep this from me?”

His fingers flex once on the steering wheel.

“Wasn’t planning on telling you at all,” he says flatly.

Ugh. That shouldn’t hurt.

It does.

I swallow. “You realize that makes it worse, right?”

He glances at me, sharp and quick. “You asked why I did it. Not how I planned to explain it.”

“That’s the same thing,” I say, and my voice cracks just a little, which I absolutely do not appreciate right now. “You don’t get to spend... what... years? A decade? Working on something like this and then act like it’s just… practical. NOOooOOOooo big deal.”

“It was practical.”

“Kacchan. You built me a hero suit that mimics a quirk I lost at sixteen. You funded most of it yourself. All might said you wrote notebooks. Multiple notebooks. Full of analysis about how I move. That’s not practical. That’s...”

I stop.

Because I don’t actually know what word goes there yet.

He pulls the car over harder than necessary and turns it off.

“Get out,” he says.

My heart jumps. “...What?”

“Not kicking you out,” he snaps. “I’m just not doing this while driving.”

I get out slowly and we sit on the warm hood of his car, the night air cool and grounding, city lights humming around us. It feels like standing on the edge of somewhere high and realizing too late that you’re already leaning forward.

Kacchan crosses his arms. “Say it.”

“Say what?”

“What you’re dancing around,” he says. “You didn’t come here just to thank me.”

I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again.

“I don’t know what this means,” I say, finally honest in the way that matters. “I don’t know how to hold it. I don’t know how to exist in a world where you did all this and didn’t think I deserved to know. I don’t know how to analyze it, how to… categorize it.”

“Nerd,” he offers first sarcastically, before his jaw tightens.

I can tell when he’s about to say something serious.

He gets quieter first. Not calm. Contained. Like he’s bracing against himself. His shoulders go rigid, his jaw sets, and he stops looking at me. The eye contact might actually undo him.

“…I’m not good at this.”

My chest tightens.

I don’t interrupt. I don’t say his name. I’ve learned, the hard way, that this is the moment you don’t touch the thread. You let him pull it himself.

“I don’t know when it started,” he says, voice rough, like it’s scraping its way out. “Everyone always wants a moment. Like it’s supposed to be some big damn realization. A switch flipping.”

He huffs a humorless breath.

“I don’t have that.”

He finally looks at me, eyes sharp and unguarded in a way that makes me anxious.

“You were just always there.”

I soften.

“Ever since we were kids,” he continues. “You chasing after me. Watching me. Looking at me like I was something worth understanding instead of something to beat.”

My throat tightens. I remember that. I remember everything.

“You pissed me off,” he says flatly. “Because you wouldn’t stay down. Because no matter how many times I told you to quit, you kept getting back up. Because you understood me in ways I wasn’t ready for.”

He clenches his fists.

“I told myself it scared me because you were weak.”

I flinch. It’s reflexive. Old.

“Turns out,” he says, quieter now, “it scared me because you weren’t. Because you had a heart that is so... beautiful.” He winced like he can’t believe he just said that out loud.

“You ran toward danger without a quirk,” he says. “No matter how much it cost you. You broke your body over and over and smiled like it didn’t matter.”

My eyes burn.

“And somewhere along the way,” he admits, voice cracking just barely, “it stopped being about rivalry. Stopped being about winning.”

He swallows.

“It became about making sure you were still there. With me.”

My breath stutters.

“We didn’t get time to figure it out,” he goes on, words coming faster now, like the dam’s finally giving. “Not really. We went from kids... to world saving heroes in the span of a year. From school to battlefields. From stupid fights to international icons.”

“You didn’t deserve to carry it.”

“That’s not your burden,” I try to say.

“Yeah,” he snaps. “It was.”

We stare at each other, the air between us electric and brittle. Our whole lives have been miscommunication. Bad communication. War communication. And now, to continue that trend... absent communication.

I think about headlines. About statues. About kids wearing my face on their backpacks. My classmates opening agencies. Kacchan becoming an amazing pro hero, take down after take down. About how everyone told me I’d done enough while something in me kept insisting that enough wasn’t the same as finished. The last decade has felt like a dream. Not good or bad. Just… unbelievable.

“Why,” I ask quietly, “did you start?”

The word hangs between us. Thin and dangerous.

Why.

He doesn’t answer right away. He’s holding himself together. “Kacchan,” I say again, faster now, because panic’s creeping in, “I’m not trying to corner you. I just… this matters to me. You matter to me. And I can’t pretend this is nothing when it’s clearly not nothing.”

“I didn’t start,” he says finally, and his voice is low and calm. “It wasn’t a decision. It was just... what needed doing.”

“That’s not an answer,” I say, gently but firmly, because I’ve learned that backing down from him never gets either of us anywhere.

He takes a long, deep breath. 

“I watched you save the world,” he says. Controlled. But there’s something shaking underneath. “I watched you take on every single thing no one else could handle. You didn’t hesitate. You didn’t complain. You didn’t even ask if it was fair.”

My throat tightens.

“You were sixteen,” he continues, and now his voice cracks just enough that it feels like a knife twisting in my chest. “Sixteen. And they handed you the whole damn war.”

I swallow. “Kacchan–”

“You don’t get to interrupt this,” he snaps, but there’s no heat in it. Just desperation. “And you DON’T get to downplay it.”

He finally looks at me then. Really looks at me. There’s something raw in his eyes that I’ve never seen turned outward like this before.

“You won,” he says. “You did it. You saved everyone. The greatest hero, Deku! And then you lost your quirk?! You lost the vestiges.” He brushes my cheek with his thumb. “You lost your freckles.” he says almost in mourning.

“You lost the thing you waited your whole life for,” he says, words coming out slower now, heavier, like he’s dragging them up from somewhere deep and uncomfortable. “You didn’t bitch about it. You didn’t quit. You just… adjusted. Like it was normal. With a smile on your face, saying you’re fine.”

He scrubs a hand through his hair, frustrated, pacing now because standing still feels like he might implode.

“You know how fucked that is?” he says. “Watching you do that? Watching you smile and say it’s fine?”

I feel like I can’t breathe. 

His laugh is short and humorless. “You always say you’re fine.”

“Well, I wasn’t!” he says quietly now. “I haven’t been. Not since I watched them cheer for you while you were still breaking.”

The night feels unbearably still. Every sound distant. Like the world has pulled back to give him room.

His hands shake. Just a little. He notices. Clenches them harder.

“I needed you,” he says, and this time there’s no armor left on the words. “I still do! I need you beside me. Not behind me. Not watching from the sidelines pretending you’re okay with it. Beside me.”

My eyes burn.

“You’ve always been a hero,” he says fiercely. “Quirk or no quirk. Suit or no suit. That never changed. But the suit...” He swallows. “The suit gives you the option back. It brings you back to me.”

Something in my chest breaks open.

“Is that… is that all it was?” I ask softly. “Because you missed me in the field?”

Kacchan laughs again, but this one cracks halfway through. “You really don’t get it.”

“Then help me get it!” I plead, stepping closer, and oh god, he’s close now. Too close. Close enough that I can see the scar on his face, the scarlet in his eyes, the sweat on his neck.

“Why do you care this much?” I insist. “Why me? Why spend years of your life making sure I could come back when you could’ve just… moved on? And why do it all without talking to me? I’ve felt like I’ve lost touch with all my friends.”

I soften. I didn’t mean to say all this.

“I’m incredibly happy for everyone, of course, but… I just missed the small moments. Dinner with my friends.”

“Yeah,” he says flatly. Defeat. Or acknowledgement. “We graduated and the space grew more and more. I couldn’t do anything about it at first,” he admits, voice dropping.

“I wasn’t... in a good place.”

The words feel dark and heavy. Serious.

“I was somehow angrier. Guilty. Messed up in ways I didn’t know how to fix yet. My head was a mess. So I worked. I trained. I went to therapy. I fixed myself piece by piece. And while I did that, I worked on this.”

He gestures vaguely, like the idea of it still feels too big to point at directly.

“I filled notebooks,” he offers with a smirk, like he knows I’ll be tickled by this information. “Just like you do. Wrote down how you move. How you think. How you fight. How you care. I brought them to Hatsume. Took extra shifts. Did overnights. Didn’t give a shit about rankings.”

“So yeah,” he finishes, quieter, steadier, eyes locked on mine. “That’s why I started.”

“I want every version of my life to include you in it. Every future I imagine, you are there.” He quickly throws in.

I’m openly crying now. I don’t even care.

“And that’s not friendship,” he adds. “I’m not that stupid. I don’t know what this is, but if it helps you categorize it... it’s not friendship. At least on my end.”

I can’t speak. I don’t trust my voice. My heart feels too full. Too raw. Like if I say his name it might split me open completely.

My fingers brush his knuckles first. Accidental. I think. At least at first...

“Kacchan,” I say quietly.

I lace my fingers through his before I can overthink it. Before I can talk myself out of it. And for a split second I’m terrified he’s going to pull away. That he’ll snap. That I crossed a line.

But he doesn’t.

His hand tightens around mine instead. I melt.

It’s warm. Rough. Familiar in a way that feels brand new. Like I’ve known this shape my whole life but never realized what it was for.

We stand there like that. Not moving. Not talking. Just… holding hands.

He hesitates, just for a second, then lifts his free hand and cups my face like he’s holding something sacred and breakable.

“You deserve a future where you get to choose,” he says. “And wherever you go... whatever you decide... I want to be there.”

His thumb brushes my cheek, wiping a tear.

“Not as your rival,” he says. “Not as your shadow.”

He looks at me like he’s offering a promise.

“As yours.”

My thoughts slow. Not stop. Never stop. But they soften enough for me to realize...

This isn’t gratitude. This isn’t obligation. This is him choosing me.

And I devastatingly understand.

The suit wasn’t the beginning. It was the proof.

This is something we’ve been avoiding our entire lives. And there is no going back to before this moment.

lingering thoughts ⚡️🎧