sugar and you, except with flowers and jihoon
cranky wedding planner woozi x florist reader
words: 2.1k
just a silly little thing i wrote this afternoon! spinoff of sugar and you (mingyu)
(May)
Jihoon is ill-tempered, foul-mouthed, and prickly. Whenever he’s distracted, lost somewhere in his thoughts, his face naturally settles into a scowl. His glowers could melt sand into glass. And so, it’s a measure of his competency, brutal efficiency, and eye for design, that he’s the most sought-after wedding planner in the city.
The first time Chan meets Jihoon, he’s nearly brought to tears. You’re in the back room, elbow deep in a sink full of camellia branches and pungent water, when you hear your teenaged part-timer calling for you in an anxious voice.
“Boss?”
You know he’s in trouble, because you’ve never heard Chan calling you ‘boss’ in the month that he’s worked here. “Coming,” you call out, drying your hands on the front of your apron. The camellias can wait. “What is it?”
You step out from behind the curtain separating the back room from the shop and come face to face with a very disgruntled looking Jihoon. Blinking at him, you slow to a stop, damp fingers still twisted in the fabric of your apron. “Jihoon? I thought you weren’t picking up your order until next Wednesday.”
“There’s been a change of plans,” Jihoon sighs. “The flowers for the venue can stay the same, but the bouquets need to be blue.”
You raise your eyebrow. “All of them?”
“And the boutonnieres too,” he says. “I know it’s short notice, I’m sorry,” he sighs, running his fingers through his already-tousled hair. He looks like he hasn’t slept in two days.
“No, I can do it,” you smile at him. “I’ll come in this weekend to work on them. Chan,” you turn toward the boy, “can you go back and finish stripping the camellias?”
“O-oh, sure,” he responds, glancing briefly toward Jihoon before slinking past you and disappearing behind the curtain.
“Here, Jihoon,” you turn toward the wall of humming refrigerators along the back of the shop, “let’s see what we can do.”
Jihoon follows you, watching silently as you deftly pick out your selections.
“What’s the vibe?” You pick out a small cluster of periwinkle-colored hydrangeas.
“Something with texture,” he responds. “Modern, not traditional, but not minimalist.”
“Some sage,” you pluck out the greenery and tuck it in with the quickly growing bundle in your arms. “These silver-dollar eucalyptus sprigs would be good too. As for the statement blooms, I’m thinking these delphiniums would do well. I have some dried blue thistles in the back as well. Some queen anne’s lace for extra texture. Um.” You look down at the mess of flowers and greenery in your hands. It’s a mess, completely unarranged, but you can already see the colors coming together.
Chewing on your lip, you shift some of the stems around, then you look up at Jihoon. “What do you think?”
Jihoon looks down at the flowers, then up at you. He might be looking at you more than the flowers, in fact. “I think,” he says, "you’re a genius.”
From behind a curtain of leaves and tightly-shut buds, you beam at him.
(Later, over steaming bowls of instant ramen and scattered thistle stems, Chan asks you how you know Jihoon.
It takes you longer than you’d like to answer that question, but you settle with what Jihoon would say if he was here: “we work together frequently.”)
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(August)
By the time Jihoon comes around, iced coffees in tow, it’s pouring rain outside. The perfect Sunday morning of just a few hours ago is now gone, replaced with low-hanging gray clouds and relentless sheets of stinging rain. It’s so humid, the large glass walls of the greenhouse are covered in a dense layer of condensation.
You, too, are covered in a sheen of sweat as you twist green florist’s wire around stems of sunflower and seeded eucalyptus into a wreath.
“It’s terrible in here,” Jihoon groans as he takes his place on the stool next to you. “It feels like I’m inhaling water.”
Laughing, you glanced over at him. “Jihoon, it’s a greenhouse. What did you think it was gonna be like?”
Jihoon ignores your question, instead choosing to ask a question of his own. “Aren’t you hot? Look, you’re sweating. Here.” He holds out an iced coffee at you.
You take the cup from his hand and relish the feeling of ice-cold condensation on your skin. “Thank you, Jihoon,” you tell him, watching as his ears instantly flush red, “you’re too nice to me.”
“I’m not,” he says automatically. “You work too hard.”
“Aren’t you being a bit of a hypocrite?”
“Yes,” he answers easily. “And here.” He reaches into his bag and pulls out a small earthenware vase with streaks of blue-green glaze. “Saw this at a gallery last night. It made me think of you, so I bought it for you.”
“Oh, Jihoon,” you smile fondly. He places the vase on your work table, and then he rotates it slightly so the most interesting glaze pattern is facing you. “I love it, Jihoon. Thank you for thinking of me.” In your little office in the shop, you have a bookshelf filled with trinkets and knick knacks. There’s a school art project that Chan had gifted to you, various books on horticulture and the Victorian language of flowers, dozens of your own notebooks detailing watering orders and deliveries and watering schedules and soil formulas, and a small smattering of little glass vases and earthenware pots that Jihoon has collected for you over the years. Every week, you dust them all and wipe them down with a damp cloth so that they shine in the afternoon sun.
(A week from today when Jihoon visits and drops by your office to pick up an invoice, he stops dead in his tracks when he spots the newest vase on your desk placed between your monitor and printer. It’s prime desk real estate, dedicated just to his vase and the small arrangement of wildflowers that you’ve placed in it.)
It’s the weekend, but Jihoon is restless and itching for some work to do, so you give him a plastic tub full of loose ribbon and twine and set him to the task of spooling and organizing everything. He puts his laptop on the work table, right between your side and his side, and the two of you watch anime quietly while working. At the end of the afternoon, you have a dozen bright sunflower wreaths, and he has a full rack of spooled ribbon.
When he helps you put everything away, back in the fridges and cabinets where they all belong, he accidentally brushes against you. For a moment, you’re so close to Jihoon, you can smell the coffee on his breath, and you wonder would it would be like to kiss him.
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(December)
“Sorry,” Jihoon says, looking genuinely apologetic under the rising and falling waves of light coming from the passing streetlights. He’s driving, and you’re pleasantly tipsy, leaning your head against the cold window and watching him.
“It’s okay, I’m not cold.” The heating is wonky in his car, and he’s bundled up in a big puffy coat with his pressed white cuffs peeking out from under his sleeves every time he moves his hands on the steering wheel. His suit jacket had been given up for you to put over your legs like a blanket, despite your protests that you would wrinkle it. It’s okay, Jihoon had shrugged, ears red, I gotta bring it to the dry cleaners anyway.
“Oh, good,” Jihoon says. He pauses and laughs. “That’s not what I was apologizing for, but I’m sorry about the heating too.”
You frown. “What are you sorry for?”
Jihoon shrugs, and for a second, he doesn’t say anything. It’s just the sound of the highway and the soft music from the radio that filters over the noise. Then, Jihoon tells you, “sorry for dragging you to a wedding and making you sit in a corner all night.”
“Oh.” You blink at him, and then you laugh. “Jihoon, you didn’t drag me to a wedding. You invited me to be your plus one, and I accepted. And you didn’t make me sit in a corner all night, we sat at a table and spent all night talking and eating.” Feeling very sleepy and warm, you grin dopily at him. “And, for the record, I had a lot of fun.”
Jihoon doesn’t respond again for a few seconds, and you almost doze off before he speaks again. “Thanks. I, um, also had a lot of fun.”
“Thanks, Jihoon-ah,” you mumble. “Wake me up when we get to my place, yeah?”
“Yeah,” he whispers. “Sweet dreams.”
(Later on, when he parks and stops the engine, he waits for a while first. You’re already awake, of course— you had woken when he turned off the highway and onto the quieter streets of your neighborhood— but you sit with your head leaned against the window and eyes closed, breathing quiet and even, and you let him have this moment. Here, in his parked car, where it’s dark and quiet, you let him watch you and chew on the inside of his cheek, hand balled up in a fist in his lap, clenching and unclenching as he struggles over whatever internal turmoil he’s working through.
You decide to save him from his struggle and shift slightly, putting on a show of blinking awake, all dazed and bleary.
“Cute,” Jihoon mumbles quietly.
You look up at him, wincing at your sore neck. “Huh?”
His eyes widen. You have an inkling that he didn’t mean for you to actually hear that, but he just flushes and pulls his lips into a thin line. “Did you have a nice nap?”
You smile at him and nod. “Thanks for driving, Jihoon. And thanks for inviting me to come with you.”
Jihoon nods, cheeks pink, and accepts his crumpled jacket when you hand it back to him. “Um,” he starts, looking at your right ear, “I had a really good time. With you.”
“Me too,” you grin, leaning forward. He leans back for a moment, and then he seems to recollect himself and he straightens his spine again so that the two of you are just inches apart.
“And, I think it would be nice if we could do this again,” he finishes his statement.
He’s so cute and flustered, you can’t help but to tease him a little. “What, go to other weddings? As guests? Just how packed is your social calendar?”
“I mean, not weddings, necessarily,” he rushes to clarify, “but, like, other things. The two of us.”
Your heart feels so full, you’re afraid it’ll bubble over. Jihoon reminds you of the gardenia plant you keep in your kitchen. You had rescued it from a hardware store, purchased at a discount when it was sickly and yellow, and you spent months and months caring for it– running a humidifier next to it, timing the amount of sun it was getting and supplementing with grow lights, testing the moisture of the soil every week, and after half a year, your little gardenia shrub produced just one large, beautiful, white blossom. Gardenias are sensitive– they like sun, but only a little bit; they like humidity, but water on the leaves will cause spots; and they won’t tolerate being moved around. You had originally planned on moving the gardenia to the shop eventually, but you ended up keeping it for yourself, this fragile little resident of your kitchen counter.
You decide to take mercy on Jihoon. “I like you,” you smile, unable to suppress the fond way you melt at him. “We don’t have to go on dates if you don’t want to.”
“No, no, I do want to go on dates! I just…” he huffs out a quick bark of laughter and pushes his hand through his hair, messing up his perfectly styled hairdo. “I like you too.”
“That’s perfect, then.” You lean forward, even closer. “Jihoon, can I kiss you?”
“I–I,” he stammers, flushing even harder, “yeah. Yeah.”)
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(May, again)
“Hi, boss,” Chan pokes his head through the curtain separating the shop from the greenhouse. It’s his last summer before he goes off to college, so you’re having him train his younger brother before he leaves town. You’ll miss Chan, that’s for sure, but Geon is a sweet boy. “Your scary boyfriend is here again.”
You frown. “Don’t call him that.”
Chan shrugs. “I think Geon is gonna cry if you don’t come out.”
Shaking your head, you grin and take off your gardening gloves. The roses can wait. You have a grumpy boyfriend to take care of first.