Noel couldn't remember a single instance in his life when he hadn't planned everything down to the tiniest detail.

In the circumstances he was born in, the hand he was dealt with, there hadn't been room for error; one single step taken into the wrong direction, one wrong move or word, and everything he had carefully crafted while still a child would've crumbled. Everything was built in shaky ground, with pillars that weren't supposed to be there because he was still an anomaly in a system created for everyone except a boy who rose to fame from the poor slums of France.

A soulmate wasn't a priority, it didn't had a place in his life when he had only one chance to get out of the misery and have something decent. He couldn't, and he hadn't let himself be swayed by feelings when rationality was the best bet he could take. So he let himself be ruled by his brain instead, ignoring feelings and pushing away the inevitable for as long as he could because, if it was far away from him then he didn't had to deal with it.

Until he couldn't keep it away from him. Until you, his soulmate, appeared in his life and he had to swallow down the rationality and open the door for the feelings he had been denying himself of all his life. He couldn't plan his way out when fate had decided he had to face this, when there wasn't logic in soulmates.

There wasn't logic in the game when his heart thumped against his ribcage whenever his gaze brushed yours across the room, when even the most minimal and accidental touch managed to blank his brain and have his heart jump to his throat like it was trying to reach for you.

How to beat something he didn't had control over? When he couldn't make rules for a game he hadn't wanted to play in the first place?

But the more he looked at you, the more he discovered he might not entirely be against this whole thing... and there was no point in denying it if you two were already bounded by fate, no?