off limits ✧ zb1 applyfic

✧ eighty four

It was already too late, when Gyuvin realized that letting Lilah pick the location for their first date wasn’t such a good idea. He'd arrived all confident, expecting a movie, or a simple café date, hell, even an escape room. Instead, he stood in front of an ice skating rink, both unfamiliar and terrifying. How they even managed to keep the place open in the middle of summer, Gyuvin had no idea, because quite frankly, he'd never stepped foot in a place like that. As soon as he had, a wave of coolness hit him. Not the refreshing coolness of the shadows you seek when you've been baking in the sun all afternoon, no. Instead, it was a biting, abrupt cold, that burned more than it soothed.

"Argh, it's so cold," he whined, rubbing his bare arms.

"You should've brought a jacket," Lilah simply said, as she retrieved two pairs of skates from the counter.

"I would have if I had known where we were going..."

So much for all of his big talk about never catching colds, and being able to lend her his jacket anytime. He'd already proven the last time he wasn’t as invincible as he'd thought. Hopefully this time, he wouldn’t be out of commission for several days. If there was one thing Gyuvin particularly hated, it was sitting idle.

In an attempt to warm his body up, Gyuvin put the skates on at the speed of light, tying the laces like he was being timed. Hopefully, going out there and getting some exercise would make some of this cold disappear. He stole a glance at Lilah, who was still untying the laces of her first shoe.

"Want me to put them on for you?" he asked with a grin on his face. "Like Cinderella?"

As expected, Lilah did not respond to his flirting with more flirting. Instead, she turned red, and shoved his face away from hers in embarrassment.

"Stop," she squeaked out, avoiding his eyes. "You're too cringey."

He laughed. "I don't mind being cringey, if it makes you blush like that."

It seemed he knew exactly what he was doing, because Lilah's cheeks grew even redder. She tried her hardest to ignore him as she finally slipped her skates on. The way to the rink was easy for Lilah, tedious for Gyuvin, but he hadn’t yet seen anything. She stepped right onto the ice, and it was like her body remembered the many hours she and her brother had spent back in Canada, practicing stunts at the ice rink, and bursting out laughing whenever the other would fall on their butt. Lilah couldn’t stop a small smile from stretching her lips, as all those memories brought a warmth through her, enough to ward away the cold.

Gyuvin, though, was refusing to step into the rink. He stood at the entrance, his face pinched in hesitation, and what she imagined to be a bit of fear.

"I, um, I've never done this before," he stammered, his voice wavering. "I'm kinda scared."

"You’ll be fine, it's not as hard as it looks." She brushed him off with a wave of the hand. "See? I'm standing just fine."

Her words were enough to give him that last boost he needed to step onto the ice. His eyebrows furrowed with determination, he moved one foot in, without casualty, and seemed to relax right away, seeing he hadn’t slipped right into oblivion. With newfound confidence, he brought his second foot up to the first, and that was when all hell broke loose. As soon as the skate touched the ice, he slipped forward, his center of gravity all crooked. With a muffled thud, he crashed right on his butt, and before he could even cry out of surprise, yelped when the cold touched his body directly.

Lilah couldn’t help it. Even though she tried to keep it in for half a second, laughter burst out of her, and she bent over so much she almost lost her footing, too. She had witnessed many falls in her years of ice skating, had even been involved in quite a few, but never so quick. Old men had lasted longer on the ice than Gyuvin had.