𝐊𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐢𝐞𝐬 || S. Todoroki x Reader

21 - Gladiator

You always wondered why your hand wraps were red.

Out of all the colors the HPSC's wardrobe department could've chosen, be it that they selected all your other clothes and sent them over in packages as your sizes grew, why had they picked red?

If they were going for the matching look, why not pick white? Your feathers were mostly that color anyway, only a few splotches of red managed to dust their way across the planes of your wings.

But as you watched your knuckles submerge under the layers of crimson fabric, the answer became (and, really, always had been) glaringly obvious.

Most of your opponents shed red; it made laundry day easier when the main garment of choice sported the same color.

As you kept winding the wraps around your palms, something circled in your gut. For some reason, as soon as you'd stepped into the hallway leading out to the stadium's field, an idea latched onto your shoulder and decided it liked the view. The idea of being watched by something much closer than you'd prefer.

"I didn't know you were wearing those." Todoroki strolled up beside you, taking a prolonged look out at the arena stands.

Why are you here?
What do you want?
"What difference is it to you?"

He didn't move, hands tucked into his pockets. "No difference, just an observation."

There was a pause where you waited for Todoroki to say what he actually wanted to.

There was a glaringly obvious reason why he was here, and you knew it wouldn't be long before it came out.

He cleared his throat. Here it came. "I think we should discuss—"

"Is there a reason you need to be here—"

"Yes."

"—that doesn't include mentioning the past ten minutes?"

Todoroki despised the way your voice sounded: flat, disinterested, almost bored. He could've been talking to a rock and its tone would've been the same. So, Todoroki decided that he'd play your game. At least for the moment. "Is there a reason why we cannot discuss this like proper adults?"

You snorted, the humor lost. "A reason? I don't trust you within an inch of my life."

"What about them? Do they trust me?"

He was angry. A silent, passive kind.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You need to actually make choices for yourself for me to find that reason applicable."

"I could say that you're enabling the behavior, but I don't care and you need to leave."

Todoroki was looking at you fully now, the crowds a forgotten backdrop to the film of your conversation. "I don't believe you."

"That's the beauty of this." You finished tucking in the end of your first hand wrap, fishing the other out before starting anew. "You don't have to, it doesn't matter. You may try to inject some of yourself into the stream of my life, but that needle will never find the vein."

Gods, Todoroki was starting to realize how much you sounded like that woman. Sakamoto, if he remembered correctly. She'd done a fine job creating a carbon copy of herself and pushing it into the pool without teaching it how to swim.

"So in this metaphor I'm the needle and you're the vein?" he asked.

"In this metaphor you're wasting my time and in actuality you're doing the same."