𝐊𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐢𝐞𝐬 || S. Todoroki x Reader

25 - Accidental Symmetry

trigger warning (?) mild panic attack

remember to drink water lovelies!

- Bo <3

***

Todoroki's room was the same as yours; too big, too much space with nothing but cold air to fill it.

Even with the warm glow of the overhead lights, the white bedsheets, white furniture, white walls, white tile, white everything made it feel more like a hospital than a hotel.

You tried to cover your scoff when you realized Todoroki's room was the one right next to yours, because of course it was.

He noticed anyway yet chose not to comment.

A window covered one of the walls, crowding the frame to the skinniest it could be. The glass played a live feature film of every light flickering below. Greens, blues, oranges, everything fractured and seeped into one continuous moving organism, bending and swaying like vines in the breeze.

You couldn't help but stand only a few inches from the window, gazing down at the streets. The glass was so clean it looked like air.

Not that you or Hawks had the best track record at differentiating screen doors or windows from the sky. The pieces of hot pink sticky tape you'd helped him put up on every window of the house still prevented most accidents.

Though there were occasions when someone (Hawks) would be too excited to lay on the couch after work and entirely forgo the safety measures in favor of ramming straight into the glass, head-first, only to bounce off it like a pebble on concrete.

"We have a shared balcony," you said, glancing at the side door that led onto a covered patio just big enough for a chair to squeeze between the railing and the wall. Your bedroom shared a mirrored view of the city.

Todoroki stepped to your side, following your eyes out the balcony.

A detachable frosted glass partition stood between your patios, so easily breakable. You hoped it would never so much as get a crack.

"We do."

"You think your father meant to put us close on purpose?" you asked, returning your gaze to the streets below, watching the colors undulate and fold over one another as small stores and bars bled into one large mosh pit of noise and iridescence.

"He doesn't care enough." Music drifted up through wind currents and permeated the air like cigarette smoke, collecting in your lungs through invisible cracks. "And he doesn't like you."

You scoffed. "Why am I not surprised?"

"How do you know him?"

"Your father?"

"Yes."

You could feel his eyes on your skin, falling on your face like summer raindrops in a sudden cloudburst.

The outside world kept a firm hold of your attention, beckoning you closer like a siren luring sailors to their demise, all vivid shards of pigment twirling fast enough that object-permanence slipped into the forgotten.

Nightlife flickered like oil paintings coming to life, one vignette after another.

"Everything looks so tiny from up here," you said, voice gone soft like freshly spun silk.

Todoroki's jaw twitched with an emotion you couldn't place, perhaps a muted frustration, before looking out the window. "They do," he agreed. "You're used to this kind of view, though."