a/n: happy what-we-thought-was jicheol day! <3

Seungcheol picks her up at midday, like he promised.

Jihoon steps out in a short summer lavender dress to see the familiar sight of Seungcheol leaning against her white picket fence, soaking in the warm summer sun.

“Hey,” he greets and she doesn’t even know why she’s so nervous. She just nods back in greeting, shuffling down the familiar footpath until Seungcheol takes her hand, tangling his fingers with her. It only makes her blush.

Seungcheol takes it all in stride, just leads her to the car, and opens the door for her.

“Why are you suddenly so gentlemanly?” Jihoon mutters as she clambers in, and that seems to dissipate the nervousness as they both get in the car and drive the short distance to the local cafe.

After that, it’s mostly the same, bickering about deciding what to eat and stealing each other’s food, but every now and again there’ll be something different - like Seungcheol calling her messy and instead of throwing a napkin at her face, reaching over to wipe sauce from the edge of - and they share red faces instead of bright laughter.

They buy crepes next door and argue about which flavour is better. Seungcheol refuses to agree that Jihoon’s strawberry is better than his blueberry and Jihoon angrily takes a huge bite out of her crepe just to spite him, glaring at him with cream on her lips.

Seungcheol laughs. He watches her fondly as she huffs and most of the cream off. She’s so beautiful like this, he thinks, cheeks filled with cream as she walks by his side.

Seungcheol reaches out a hand to her shoulder, stopping her in the middle of the sidewalk as he bends over, eyes fixed on cream smeared lips. But he stops himself at the last second and pulls away, apologizing; because he's scared Jihoon isn't ready for that, doesn't want that. He doesn’t want to scare her away when he’s finally found out she feels the same way.

But when finally stops berating himself, he notices Jihoon is completely red and frozen in place, like a robot that’s stopped functi