Chapter Text
woohyun loves his job. camellias, bellflowers, snowdrops—woohyun could spend the entire day in the nursery, taking a look at how his plants are growing and checking up on his sprouts. business is good: he gets plenty of lovestruck high schoolers hoping to buy roses for their crushes and lots of bored housewives looking to brighten up their kitchens with an arrangement or two.
most of his customers are one-timers, though. flowers are expensive, and it’s not something most people can afford on a daily basis. there’s an office next door to his flower shop. it’s a high-rise, and woohyun doesn’t even know how high up into the air it goes, or for how long it’s been there, or even what kind of businesses are in that building. what he does know, though, is that there’s a weekly meeting one of the offices in the high-rise has, one that always has a centerpiece in the middle of the table. woohyun knows this because one of the workers there comes down to his flower shop every friday morning and orders the same arrangement every time.
“not too fond of spontaneity, huh?” woohyun jokes after the third time the man shows up at the counter with his credit card in hand. the man’s eyebrows furrow.
“no?” he half-asks, half-states, and woohyun has to hold back a laugh. there’s something cute, endearing almost, about the way the man takes the flowers from him and cradles them in his arms the way he would to a dog. woohyun waves him off, and he turns his attention to the girl and her mother holding a bouquet of lilies.
woohyun learns more about the man as the weeks go by. sometimes, he requests a slight change to the arrangement, which woohyun takes care of in front of him. he learns that the man’s name is sunggyu, that he’s an accountant, that his office always sends him to grab the centerpieces for the week’s meeting.
“it’s not too bad, though. the meetings, i mean. they’re a little long, but what can you do about it? nothing, exactly,” sunggyu says one day as he watches woohyun replace one of the carnations with a chrysanthemum. woohyun hums, and he grabs one of the shears on the counter to nick off a stray leaf. when woohyun looks back at sunggyu, his eyebrows are creased in the middle again. “sorry if this is a little rude, but do you like it?”
“like what?” woohyun asks, mid-shear. sunggyu gestures at the arrangement he’s working on. “oh, well, the flowers your boss chose are very nice. they're very in season, and the colors all match well. it gives off a very spring-like feeling. very bright. i like it.”
“no, i mean your job.” sunggyu’s worrying his lip under his teeth, and woohyun wonders if he even knows that he’s doing it. woohyun guesses that he should’ve known, though, what sunggyu was really hinting at.
“i love it,” woohyun says honestly. and he does: he loves the mixture of the smells of the different blooms, he loves the way there’s a science to the care that he has to put into each different one, he loves how he’s gotten to meet so many interesting and different people through what he does.
“it suits you,” sunggyu says, a small smile on his face as he stands up. he pays for the flowers as usual, and when he takes the centerpiece in his arms and cradles them the same way again, woohyun feels something deep in his chest, like his heart is leaping. he presses the base of his palm to his chest.
“shut up,” he tells his heart. his heart doesn’t listen to him. figures.
they continue like this for another month, where woohyun ignores the way his palms get sweaty whenever sunggyu smiles at him, where woohyun has to give sunggyu flowers every week and pretend like these are the flowers he actually wants sunggyu to have. then one week, sunggyu doesn’t show up. woohyun waits there, tapping his fingers against the counter, until he gets an email from the company sunggyu works for.
hello. please bring the arrangement to room 308, our receptionist will buzz you in. thank you, and sorry for the inconvenience.
woohyun locks up his shop and brings the arrangement upstairs, and he has to will himself not to be too disappointed when he doesn’t see sunggyu among the black-suited men sitting around the conference table.
the week after that, sunggyu appears, as always. he has a mask on around his face, and the teasing joke that was just on the tip of woohyun’s tongue disappears in a flash. “are you alright?” woohyun asks, worry creeping into his voice.
sunggyu nods, then gestures at his throat. he can’t speak, then, woohyun guesses. “that must be some nasty summer cold going around,” woohyun says, frowning.
sunggyu nods again, then he walks to the counter to pay for this week’s flowers. woohyun takes his card and runs it through, then passes the card back to its owner. sunggyu’s about to reach for the centerpiece that’s sitting on the counter when woohyun stops him, ducking back behind the counter.
woohyun's palms are sweaty again, and his blood is rushing through his ears, and he feels like he can’t breathe, but he knows that if he doesn’t do this, he’ll never get a chance to. he takes a deep breath and reaches for the small bouquet he’d set aside this morning. sunggyu’s eyebrows rise almost to his hairline when woohyun passes him the bouquet of sunflowers. his eyes are full of confusion, and he’s about to pull his mask down to ask about these flowers when woohyun stops him before he can even speak.
“these are for you. from me. they’re on the house, you could say.” woohyun grins at sunggyu, leaning across the counter. “have a nice day, then!”
sunggyu’s expression is still as bemused as ever when he takes the arrangement and the sunflowers, pushing the door open with his hip when he leaves, and woohyun has to resist the urge not to take a photo of sunggyu with so many flowers in his arms like that.
he wonders if sunggyu’s going to notice the card he’d slipped in with the flowers. wonders if sunggyu’s going to read what’s inside the card, wonders if sunggyu’s going to respond to what woohyun has to say to him. he wonders if sunggyu even knows what sunflowers mean in the language of the flowers, but he supposes he’ll find out his answer soon enough.
hey there.
sorry if this is cheesy, but i think i really really really adore you very very very much. would you like to go out to dinner with me sometime?
circle yes or no!