ten: crown

Gregory hears it before he sees it.

The pitchy whistle of a shooting star hits him before red rope curls around his right wrist, twisting so hard it digs into the skin painfully. He feels his hand being yanked forward, then the red rope shifts its attention to his waist, pinning his free arm to his side as it wraps around him like a vice.

"Motherfucker---" Gregory has time to blurt out, right before the rope coils around Jeong-Soon's waist, yanking them together. Gregory bites back a curse when he finds his face instantly crushed into Jeong-Soon's hard chest as the rope starts on their legs, tying them together neatly.

The world dissolves into oblivion, leaving behind just the two of them. Gregory's instantly reminded of the cliché Diva Christmas movies he hates so much. He'd never been able to appreciate how the dog's leash had always conveniently been able to tie the main couple together. Why did I ever mock those stupid shows?

He can't move.

His fingers twitch at his side, helpless. Gregory's senses come back to him in a rush, and he's suddenly acutely aware of everything around him. The soft, almost inaudible profanities falling from Jeong-Soon's mouth. Their incredible proximity, pressed face to chest. His own heartbeat, bass thrumming in his ears, hot and heavy and desperate. And then there's how good Jeong-Soon smells, like fresh clothes and the slightest hint of pineapple.

The scarlet rope clings tight to him. It doesn't feel like rope.

"Those stupid headphones! Aren't they wireless?" Jeong-Soon yelps, and everything finally clicks together in Gregory's head. Wire. Of course. The dig of the tie against his skin, too harsh and thin and smooth to be rope. The headphones. The fucking headphones! Anger floods his mind, followed by the shocking balm of relief. He's being tortured by them too. I wasn't hallucinating. I wasn't hallucinating.

I'm not crazy!

"I'm so sorry!" Jeong-Soon's desperate voice breaks through Gregory's thoughts, and he realises that Jeong-Soon is actually struggling against their bonds. He should be relieved. But something in his empty heart aches, followed by a stab of embarrassment when he becomes way too fucking aware that Jeong-Soon's squirming has led to his thigh against Gregory's groin, and that his stupid dick is responding in the worst way possible.

"I hate you!" Gregory yells back petulantly, hating how he sounds like a huge brat. He comforts himself with the fact that his brattiness would probably do its job of distracting Jeong-Soon from his rapidly growing arousal. He tugs at the wires binding him---there's no use. His hands are pinned tightly to his sides, his head's pressed into a bony chest, and he's quite literally tied to the person he currently hates the most in the entire world.

"It's not my fault the headphones are doing...this!" Jeong-Soon exclaims. He sounds flustered rather than panicked now, and Gregory comes to the horrible conclusion that Jeong-Soon has realised Gregory's dick is digging into his thigh. Stupid fucking hormones. Stupid fucking nerve endings or whatever they're called. Stupid fucking headphones.

"You're too fucking tall," Gregory retorts, voice muffled by the cloth-covered bones practically poking into his mouth. He tries to move his head away. When he feels his neck crack, he gives up. "You're like, what, six feet?"

"Six feet and one inch," Jeong-Soon answers, still struggling against the wire looped around their intertwined bodies.

"Too fucking tall. Grow shorter so I can breathe," Gregory snaps. The words strike him as startlingly familiar when they leave his mouth, and he remembers---remembers how he'd said the same thing to Colin whenever he'd been swept into a hug by his significantly taller ex-boyfriend. The storm of his heart howls its rage. Agitato.

No, no, no. Stop it. But Gregory can't stop now, not when he's started thinking about Colin, about how his ex-boyfriend had crushed him to the ground and then split his soul apart, taking his dignity too. Stop it. He can't help remembering how the last person he'd been so close to had been Colin, how Colin had been the only person after Jeong-Soon to force his way past Gregory's personal bubble. Stop it! But he can't, even as he stiffens against the ties binding him, hands grabbing the wires and ripping them apart with all his might, fuelled by anger and misery alone.

The wires don't budge.

"No! Fuck!" Gregory screams. It barrels through his mind like a dozen steel bullets, how fucking similar Jeong-Soon is to Colin now, with his vibrant grin and brown eyes and insanely tall stature. He doesn't feel Colin's muscle in Jeong-Soon's arms and chest, and their faces look nothing alike, but the resemblance is there, and it's enough for Gregory to recoil. "Get me out of here!"

"I'm trying!" Jeong-Soon whimpers, joining Gregory in tearing at the stubborn wires. Gregory feels his fingers trembling as he desperately rolls the ties over his rough skin, searching for a weak spot before his mangled mind frays itself apart.

The soft, subtle edges of Jeong-Soon's scent invade Gregory's mind as his actions shove him further into the other boy's chest, the wires tightening their grip around them both. He grits his teeth, forcing his mind to turn the sweet, faint pineapple into something sour, acrid, twisted, something dark enough for him to run, for him to flee far away---far away from Jeong-Soon and his bright eyes and equally bright smile.

Jeong-Soon's not smiling now, though. From what little Gregory can see of his face, his forehead is furrowed, eyes squeezed shut as he fumbles with the unrelenting wires.

Gregory's heart stops.

And he stares.

Stares with his impossibly dark eyes, craning his neck far beyond its limits just to look at Jeong-Soon's face. He's never seen this side of Jeong-Soon before, one lost in the torrid throes of concentration as he valiantly tries to get them out of the sticky situation the headphones have placed them in, and it's so fucking attractive it hurts, and oh God, he's hard.

Jeong-Soon glances down at the same time Gregory pulls away, alarm crawling across his face, the concentration gone. "Are you---" and for a moment, Gregory's soul leaves his body, because his stupid fucking dick has fully betrayed him in the worst way possible.

"Shut the fuck up," Gregory mumbles, cheeks burning as red as his jacket, as red as the wires trapping Jeong-Soon in his bubble. "Shut the fuck up."

"I didn't say anything."

"You were going to." Gregory feels his skin flush even more, feverish against his pallid bones. His feelings curl around him like a kiss of fire, bringing back the pounding orchestra in his head as he recalls the time two years back, when he'd impulsively pressed his lips against Jeong-Soon's mouth, heart beating as fast as the symphonies in his mind.

He wants to do it again.

The urge grips Gregory's chest, so strong and dangerous that he stumbles back, wobbly on his rigidly-bound legs, dragging Jeong-Soon with him. The snap of his knuckles against the balcony railing as he grapples for steadiness punches him out of his feelings, but Gregory senses his cheeks flaring even more when Jeong-Soon rocks them back to their feet, two fingers grabbing the side of Gregory's hip to stop them from falling again. Even though Jeong-Soon lets go almost immediately, his touch burns rivers on Gregory's side, hotter and far more painful than the wires digging into his skin.

"Don't touch me," Gregory snaps, face unwillingly buried in Jeong-Soon's chest again.

"I'm sorry," Jeong-Soon says immediately. His face lights up bright pink, and he turns his head away. "We need to get out of these."

"And just how do you propose we do that?" Gregory heaves a silent sigh of relief when he realises he's gone mostly soft out of sheer willpower alone. "We're trapped by these...I don't know, magic headphones or something?"

"Magic," Jeong-Soon breathes, the wonder in his voice making Gregory scowl. "Of course. I don't even---what else---" Gregory feels the throb of Jeong-Soon's throat against his head as the other boy swallows, hard. "There's really no other explanation for this, is there?" Then his chin snaps up. "Mia! Sully! I'm so glad to see you guys! We're, uh, a little tied up here!"

Gregory bites back a curse. Against his better judgement, he tilts his neck back, wincing at how it cracks. Standing in the corridor, jaws on the floor, are Jeong-Soon's annoying curly-haired girlfriend and an unfamiliar, dark-haired boy who looks like he could probably bench-press Gregory's whole family into the ground.

"Babe? What---" Jeong-Soon's girlfriend gasps, and Gregory instantly hates her even more than he already does. Her voice is high and sugary, but to his distorted mind, it sounds pitchy and sickly-sweet.

"It's a long story," Jeong-Soon replies miserably, and Gregory wants to scream.

The Hulk, looking extraordinarily huge next to Jeong-Soon's petite girlfriend, frowns. "I thought I told you---"

"I know, Sully, I know. I didn't have a choice, man. We kind of crashed into each other, and...well..." Jeong-Soon squirms, and Gregory comes to the reasonable conclusion that the other boy must be trying to free his hands. "This happened."

"Okay," the Hulk says slowly, sounding doubtful. Gregory takes unnecessary pleasure in how Jeong-Soon's irritating girlfriend still hasn't picked her jaw off the ground yet. "Okay, hold still. I'll try to...get you guys out of...that thing."

Gregory lets his head flip forward again, feeling his forehead press against Jeong-Soon's shirt. A small, almost maniacal part of him wants to bury his face in Jeong-Soon's chest, tell the Hulk and the Girlfriend to fuck off because they're fine right where they are, but he knows they're not fine. He's not fine, because he fucking hates Kang Jeong-Soon, and he's fairly certain Kang Jeong-Soon fucking hates him too.

Gregory feels an unfamiliar hand grip the tie stringing him and Jeong-Soon together---probably the Hulk's, judging by the size of the palm---and to his shock, the wires retract immediately, vanishing into thin air and leaving them completely free.

Caught off-guard, Gregory falls over almost immediately. Jeong-Soon's gangly form hits the ground just a second later.

He looks up slowly, rubbing his wrists. He's not hallucinating---wire marks have etched their way into his skin, solid and real and painful. Jeong-Soon looks confused, as does the Hulk. The Girlfriend's mouth is still wide open, and Gregory secretly wishes a fly would buzz inside.

The Girlfriend speaks first, somehow managing to get her jaw off the floor and back into her face. "So...what just happened?"

"Shit you're probably too dumb to understand," Gregory grumbles. He'd said it quietly, but evidently, the Girlfriend has sharp ears, judging by the way her mouth opens again, her eyes lighting up with anger.

Jeong-Soon instantly gets up, dusting off his jeans as he heads to the Girlfriend, wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin on his head. "Mia, don't listen to him. I have no idea what just happened. I'm so sorry. I'm really sorry, Mia. I don't know---"

The Girlfriend's features soften, and she wraps her arm around Jeong-Soon's waist comfortingly. Gregory wants to yell at her to get away. He's not sure why. "It's okay, babe. I trust you, and I know you wouldn't do anything like that intentionally." Her brows knit together. "Though I'd really like to know how you ended up like that with...him."

"I'm sorry," Jeong-Soon repeats, sounding distressed. "I don't know, Mia. I really don't."

Liar! Gregory screams in his head. Then he reconsiders, because although they know what tied them up, they don't exactly know why the headphones had been attacking them. So he holds his tongue for once, seething silently as he watches the Girlfriend patting Jeong-Soon on the back and pressing her face into his chest. "It's okay, babe. It's okay," she says, and Gregory wants to punch her in the nose.

"No thanks for me?" the Hulk rumbles, and Jeong-Soon looks up at him gratefully. The trio starts walking down the corridor, not sparing a second glance back at Gregory.

Once he's alone, Gregory starts picking himself off the ground, cursing everything in the universe that has led up to this moment. His heart's still pounding against his chest, a ship battered by the torrential waves of his feelings. How he wants to move on, run from the Colin in Jeong-Soon, but how the parts of Jeong-Soon that he'd fallen in love with keep him coming back, drawing him in like iron fillings to the relentless pull of a magnet.

Stupid headphones. Stupid fucking headphones.

٩( ᐛ )و

Gregory knows he's in deep shit when a tall guy who isn't Jeong-Soon approaches his corner of the cafeteria.

"Hey," the guy greets, plopping himself into the seat across Gregory without asking, causing Gregory to look up from his salad. He's tall and tan, with thin sheets of muscle clearly lining the arms protruding from his black t-shirt. Thick glasses rest on the bridge of his high nose, and steely copper eyes peer out from behind them. He looks oddly familiar, even though Gregory's pretty sure he's never seen the dude before.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Gregory snaps. He's been in a horrible mood ever since getting tangled up with Jeong-Soon the day before.

The stranger grins, but it's not a friendly smile. It's a loaded gun, and it cuts through Gregory like a knife, sending goosebumps arcing down his spine. "I'm Archer."

"Okay. I don't care." Gregory tries to focus on his salad, but he can't---the guy's cold stare digs into him relentlessly. Discomfort swallows him in waves.

"I don't care whether you care or not." And just like that, a knife that is definitely not his stabs into Gregory's salad, inches away from his face. It makes him look up again, just in time to see the icy fury in Archer's gaze, his index and middle fingers slightly parted---as if he'd been holding a knife between them just seconds before. "You roughed Aimee and her boyfriend up quite a bit, didn't you?"

Shivers tingle at the base of Gregory's back, but he refuses to back down. "That's none of your business."

"It becomes my business when you hurt my fucking twin," Archer seethes, and Gregory recalls where he'd seen his face before---firmly embedded into the features of the pink-haired girl from music class. Twins. Of course. Even though Archer's hair is dark and buzzed close to his head, and he's far more muscular, the resemblance is clear.

Gregory looks away---anything to block out the clashing mixture of fire and ice in Archer's eyes. "I didn't touch her."

Before Gregory can even blink, the knife is back in Archer's hand, and the flame in his stare has dimmed to snow, cold enough to freeze over steel. It's even scarier, the way he wields himself like he knows he doesn't have to get angry to intimidate, and it's working, because Gregory is equal parts jealous and intimidated at the same time. "I know you didn't," the other boy drawls, twirling the knife between two fingers. "But what you don't understand is that Aimee and Magnus are a package deal. You hurt one of them, you hurt both of them. You punched Magnus, and therefore, you punched Aimee by proxy too. Which is where I come in."

Gregory blinks. "You literally have the same logic as that one 'She was thirteen turning fourteen soon so she pretty much fifteen but fifteen is the new sixteen and sixteen close to seventeen might as well round it to eighteen' meme."

He half-expects Archer to instantly kill him, but to his surprise, the other boy merely barks out a grating laugh. "You're a real smartass, aren't you?"

"Thanks, I try. Now get out of my face." Gregory knows that isn't the smartest thing to say to a guy with a knife in his hand, but he doesn't want to talk to Archer about his stupid twin sister and her equally stupid boyfriend.

Suddenly, there's a hand wrapped around his throat, and Gregory can't breathe. Normally, he'd be almost aroused, but given the circumstances, he's shocked to feel nothing but fear clogging his head, dizzying and powerful and the opposite of addictive.

It's then that Gregory realises that he really doesn't want to die.

"Listen up," Archer demands, surprisingly calm. The only thing giving away his anger is the rough snarl in his voice, dangerously low, the sallow whisper of nails on a chalkboard. "Apologise to them, and we'll forget this ever happened, okay?"

Conflict flares in Gregory's mind---the urge to keep his pride and the urge to keep his life battling for dominance.

Pride wins.

"Fuck off," Gregory growls past the cloying grip of Archer's slender fingers, his throat screaming with the effort of forcing words from his tongue.

To his surprise, Archer releases him, leaning back. His lips turn up, baring yellowed teeth in a shark-like grin. "Alright. I see how it is." He pushes himself up from his seat, still smiling. "I'll see you around, Gregory."

Archer's long gone when Gregory realises that he'd never told him his name.

before we proceed to my Very Long A/N---

THIS IS NOT PHOTOSHOP I SWEAR

THE SOULMATE PARADOX IS ACTUALLY A WATTPAD-FEATURED BOOK NOW

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG THIS IS HUGE THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT I COULDN'T HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOU GUYS SHDJDJJD

anygays, fanboying aside---

heyo, my precious smol beans! guess who was a dum-dum? again?

(you have three options. all of them are 'Alex'.)

so anygays, those who've been Keeping Up With The Alex since last ONC would know that i developed RSI (repetitive strain injury) while trying to finish up We Were Liars. (it was worth it because WWL was a somewhat big success for me.) so due to school, i didn't write much after the ONC and haven't really WRITTEN until this year's ONC. naturally, my RSI 'went away' because i wasn't writing and typing that much.

welp. so, uh, it's back. i currently have occasional pains in my right wrist and some trouble moving my fingers properly. will it get worse? yes. i'm sure it will. but this is not an announcement for hiatus, dw. because i already went on a month-long break from TSP, i will be continuing on with it. i've written through the RSI, and i can do it again. however, if it really gets too bad, i may have to take a pause from writing. i'm going to try icing my hands from time to time, which might help. idk.

but as it isn't terrible so far, expect the usual regular updates from me.

agitato - in an agitated, restless manner

anygays, even though no one tried guessing the movie in the previous chapter, it was Pitch Perfect :)

also, i was rereading the introduction of this book and, well---

that aside, i have no idea why this chapter was so long. like, seriously. WHY. this is like, what, over 3k words? no idea. as some of you know, i've been in a really bad place mentally, but lately i've been feeling like a fully functioning human being again and IT IS GLORIOUS. like, i can ACTUALLY DO STUFF instead of staring at a piano/blank Samsung note/missing gc assignment for like, an hour. i can actually go DAYS without having mental breakdowns and IT'S ABSOLUTELY AMAZHANG. i can carry on normal human conversations and write like normal. i can eat and sleep and wake up properly.

like, you seriously don't appreciate good mental health days until you have a few good mental health days after being pretty much stuck in a vegetative state for weeks.

point is that I Am Currently Unstoppable and that resulted in me pumping out like 3k words in two hours :D like, they may not be GOOD words, but they're words! and i'm really proud of those words because being able to type out those words means that i'm on my way to becoming a fully-functioning human being again!

(i am aware that my mental state probably sounds like severe depression. trust me, it's not. i'm just overreacting and being overly sensitive, according to my mom. and she's a dentist, which is pretty close to a doctor? so she should know? i'm getting much better, though! so don't worry about me :D)

anygays, i love you guys so much, and thank you for putting up with me <333 make sure to take care of yourselves and drink LOTS of waduh

xoxo, currently wattpad-featured author Alex