#lightning mcread 🚗⚡

[hello-car-fandom]

fic recs

mv1:

1. the good luck charm by @randominchident

2. wired in? series by @dreamauri

3. allergic to romance by @itsnesss

4. war of the foxes by @oikarma

5. all over me by @verstappenverse

6. the language of details by @itsnesss

yt22:

1. it's a bad idea, right? by @tsunodaradio

2. pressed between pages by @norrisradio

3. love problems by @tsunodaradio

4. call me when you get home by @cinnamorussell

ln4:

1. pretty when you cry by @strawberryys-stuff

2. miss independent by @norristeria

3. every version of after by @norrisradio

op81:

1. let him see by @sunbeamlessreads

2. the ex effect by @lvrclerc

3. rent's owed, baby by @dreamauri

4. some kind of faith by @norrisradio

gr63:

1. you belong with me by @harrysfolklore

cs55:

1. just to know you are alive by @tsunodaradio

ih6:

1. not a lot (just forever) by @tsunodaradio

[hello-car-fandom]

STOP DEVASTATING MEEEEE OMFG OMFG MZMXMRMDNNXDKND

i am NEVER getting over this para. n e v e r

i am staring at my ceiling and will do so for the next month. god

PRESSED BETWEEN PAGES

LINE BY LINE ᝰ.ᐟ "If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever." - Lord Alfred Tennyson

ᝰ PAIRING: yuki tsunoda x reader | ᝰ WC: 1.4K ᝰ GENRE: fluff!!! mention of one (1) fight, yuki is in love

ᝰ INCOMING RADIO: turns out me and a have a shared favorite quote! i'm a big lover of the language of flowers so this one is special to me ꨄ︎ requested by @hello-car-fandom !

send me an ask for my line by line event.ᐟ

Yuki doesn’t say much when you change the flowers.

It happens quietly, usually on a Sunday. The kind of slow morning where the sky hangs low and the light in the apartment turns golden for no reason at all. Sometimes he’s just getting back from a run, shoes damp with dew, shirt clinging to his back. Sometimes he’s on the couch, scrolling through lap data, one leg tucked under him and his hair still damp from the shower.

You move through the room like it’s something sacred—plucking limp stems from glass jars, fingertips stained with water and wilting green. On the kitchen counter. By the window. Once, tucked inside a toothbrush cup by the bathroom sink.

You never make a big deal out of it. Just hum under your breath and hum again when the new bouquet unfurls its petals under the faucet. It’s the only way you really keep track of the seasons, you told him once, hands full of lilacs and eucalyptus. When you don’t have time to notice the air changing or the daylight shifting, you trust the florists to do it for you.

He listens to that in the back of his mind, files it away. Like how tulips mean spring. Daisies mean rain is coming. Marigolds mean you’re starting to sleep with the fan on again.

He never says anything when the old ones go. Just watches as you slide them from their vases, one by one, and lay them gently into the compost bin. The petals fall apart in your fingers sometimes, thin and papery. The stems bend too easily. They’ve softened with time.

But when you leave the room—off to take a call, or switch on the kettle, or pull laundry from the dryer—he moves.

Softly. Like it’s a secret. Like he’s doing something wrong, though it never really is.

He reaches into the bin, fingers threading through damp coffee grounds and orange peels until he finds the stems. Not all of them. Just one. Maybe two. The ones still holding their shape, even if their color has started to fade.

❀˖° THE TULIP - APRIL °˖❀

The front door creaks open with the soft click of a key turning too carefully, like he’s afraid to wake the walls.

Yuki drops his duffel bag quietly just inside, his shoulders stiff from the flight, neck aching from hours spent tilted awkwardly against the seat. Tokyo rain clings to the sleeves of his hoodie, tiny dark circles blooming where it soaked through.

He’s barely taken a step inside when he sees you—curled up on the couch, arms folded tight against your chest, knees drawn in like you’re trying to make yourself smaller. You’re asleep, mouth parted just slightly, hair falling across your cheek. The TV flickers with the low hum of some late-night rerun, casting moving shadows over the blanket tangled around your legs.

He moves quietly, kneeling beside the coffee table. That’s when he sees the bouquet—still wrapped in brown paper, tulip heads peeking shyly from the fold, pale pink and a little bruised around the edges.

The receipt is folded underneath it, timestamped from hours ago. You must have picked them up right after your shift. You must’ve waited.

Yuki swallows around something that tastes too much like guilt and gratitude and everything in between. He should wake you. He doesn’t.

Instead, he touches one of the tulips lightly, presses the soft edge of its petal between his fingers. He smiles, just a little. Then he stands, pads over to the kitchen, and pulls an old mug from the cupboard. Fills it halfway. Snips the stems like you always do.

By the time you stir awake, groggy and blinking through the television static, the tulips are standing tall in the center of the kitchen table, catching the soft, early light of dawn.

You don’t even notice the single tulip missing from the bunch.

But Yuki does. He presses it between the pages of an old notebook that night, the faintest scent of your waiting still clinging to its petals.

❀˖° THE DAISY - JUNE °˖❀

The clouds break with no warning.

One second it’s thick summer air, heavy with sun and the low buzz of heat, and the next it’s thunder cracking over the buildings and rain hitting the pavement like applause.

You don’t even flinch.

Yuki’s still drying his hair from a post-run shower when he hears the balcony door slide open. The curtain lifts with a gust of wind, carrying the scent of wet concrete and ozone.

When he walks into the living room, towel draped over his shoulders, he freezes at the sight of you—barefoot, already soaked, arms outstretched like you’re trying to catch the sky in your hands.

You laugh—head tipped back, eyes closed—spinning once on your heel like a kid. Your white T-shirt clings to your sides, and your hair sticks to your forehead in wet strands, but you don’t seem to care.

“It’s raining,” you say, like he hadn’t noticed.

“I can see that,” he replies, deadpan—but he doesn’t pull you back inside. He leans on the doorframe, watching you twirl barefoot on the slick tiles, lightning stitching its way across the clouds.

There’s a tiny jar by the railing with a single daisy, already sagging under the weight of the water. You must’ve grabbed it from the little garden box, some spontaneous, sunlit moment made permanent in glass.

He’ll take it inside later—after the sky clears, after you’ve come back in, dripping and radiant, tugging him by the wrist to dance with you in puddles.

That night, while you’re brushing your hair out, back turned to him in the mirror, he plucks the daisy from its jar and slips it between the pages of a half-filled journal.

Even months later, it still smells like summer rain.

❀˖° THE MARIGOLD - LATE AUGUST °˖❀

The silence after the argument feels like its own kind of noise.

Yuki sits at the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, fingers knotted in his hair. You’re in the kitchen, pretending to do dishes, though all he hears is water running and not much else.

Neither of you meant for it to go that far. The fight was stupid—about groceries, or maybe laundry, or maybe the way he sometimes shuts down when things get hard. You’d raised your voice. He’d left the room.

Now it’s sunset, and the apartment glows with that soft, golden hush that only comes once a day, like the light is trying to forgive everything it touches.

When you appear in the doorway, your expression isn’t angry anymore. You’re holding something in your hands—a marigold, still bright, pulled from the vase on the table.

You walk up to him slowly and offer it out, wordlessly.

He looks up, meets your eyes. Then he laughs—quiet and a little embarrassed—and takes the flower from you, twirling it once between his fingers.

“I was an ass,” he says.

“You were tired,” you reply. “So was I.”

He tugs you down beside him, your thigh pressed against his. The marigold rests between you on the bedspread, its orange glow catching the last of the sun.

Later, he pretends to be asleep while you make dinner. He slips the marigold into a folded napkin and places it gently in the spine of his notebook.

It smells like apologies and soft light and the feeling of coming home again.

Each flower is carefully flattened between the pages of an old notebook he keeps zipped up in the lining of his suitcase. He doesn't need to label them. He remembers. Which flower came from which Sunday. Which week you couldn’t sleep. Which day you laughed so hard you spilled water all over the counter.

Sometimes, he tucks one into his pocket before a flight or race weekend. It crumbles a little each time he does, but it’s still enough. Just a whisper of the color, the shape—of you.

You never notice.

Or maybe you do. Maybe that’s why you started tying the stems with twine now, something softer and easier to unwind, like you’re giving permission. Like you’re saying, go on, take this one too.

And he does.

Quietly, always.

[hello-car-fandom]

I had to pause for a minute reading these lines. god, i want to scream so bad

hello what the fuck. stop giving me emotional distress?????????? i am in CRISIS NOW????????

EVERY VERSION OF AFTER

LINE BY LINE ᝰ.ᐟ “You’re as beautiful as the day I lost you.” - how to train your dragon 2 (2014)

ᝰ PAIRING: lando norris x reader | ᝰ WC: 1.6K ᝰ GENRE: angst with hints of fluff, exes to ???? ᝰ INCOMING RADIO: for those of you that don't know, httyd is probably my favorite movies of all time, and angst is my favorite genre to write. so to kae, who said i would rue the day i decided on this event: gotcha :) ꨄ︎ requested by @tsunodaradio !

send me an ask for my line by line event.ᐟ

It has been exactly 1 year, 4 months, 23 days, and 7 hours since Lando last saw you.

(Not that he was counting. Because he definitely wasn’t. Of course not. He just has a really good memory — sharp, like new gravel, like the sting of saltwater in the skin splits you don’t notice until later.)

He had convinced himself it wouldn’t sting when it happened — seeing you again — that time would have rubbed the sharp edges smooth by now, left only the faint echo of something sweet-then-sour on the back of his tongue. He’d told himself, once or twice, that maybe he’d even feel nothing at all.

But now, standing half in shadow at the edge of the paddock, one glove half-pulled on, he sees the way your silhouette cuts through the haze of the late afternoon sun — and just like that, all those lies he told himself crumple like pit lane flyers in the rain.

You’re here.

Not a memory. Not some phantom that occasionally slipped into his dreams when he was too tired to build walls.

You’re actually here.

And you look—

God.

You look the same in all the worst ways.

Same tousled hair you used to fix without looking, fingers raking through it like it was second nature. Same frayed lanyard slung around your neck, credentials bouncing softly with every step. Same old charm bracelet you once swore was lucky, though you never said why. You still wear all black like it’s armor. Still scribble in a battered notebook like the words might run away if you don’t trap them fast enough. Still bite the inside of your cheek when you’re focusing too hard.

He wonders, with a sudden, absurd pang, if you still take your coffee with that stupid almond milk that he used to swear tasted like stale bread. If your fingers still get ink-stained when you’re writing fast. If you still hum under your breath when you’re editing late at night — low, tuneless, like you don’t realize you’re doing it.

But he doesn’t move.

Can’t.

Because you haven’t seen him yet.

And he’s not ready for the weight of your gaze.

You were a motorsport journalist even before him. That’s what you always told people when they asked — how’d you meet? how’d you end up in the same orbit?

“It wasn’t because of him,” you’d say, brows raised, voice cool. “I was already in love with the speed before I ever looked twice at the driver.”

But the truth is: it was a Tuesday. It was raining. Your first interview with Lando was supposed to be quick — just a few filler quotes for a mid-season feature. But he’d kept talking, even after your recorder stopped, about nothing and everything: the pressure, the boredom, the way the silence of hotel rooms scared him more than high-speed corners. And you’d listened — not just nodded, not just smiled politely, but really listened — and when you said, “You don’t have to be interesting all the time, you know,” he’d looked at you like he hadn’t heard that before.

And somehow, over time, his life started folding around yours like a page dog-eared in the wrong place. Fast food between flights. Shared playlists. Long walks at night in places neither of you would remember the names of, just the feel of the cold and the buzz of something unspoken between you.

There was this one night in Austria — the kind of night that lives in your ribs long after it’s over. It had rained earlier, but the sky had cleared by the time you slipped out of the hotel, shoes in hand, damp pavement hushing your footsteps.

Lando had followed, of course. No jacket, just a hoodie too thin for the altitude, arms crossed and shivering like he expected you to take pity on him. You didn’t. You just laughed and said, “You’re the one who insisted on following me out here, dumbass.”

He had grinned like he always did when you called him that — like it was a term of endearment you didn’t quite want to admit to.

You ended up on a hill just outside the city, the kind with tall grass and no real trail, only the ghost of one worn into the dirt by the feet of whoever came before you. There were stars overhead — real ones, not just the ones you’d gotten used to on racetrack ceilings and behind camera flashes. You lay side by side in the grass, fingers barely touching, your body curled toward his like muscle memory.

“I used to think I’d hate this kind of quiet,” he said after a while, voice low, eyes tracing constellations he didn’t know the names of.

You turned your head toward him. “And now?”

His lashes fluttered. He blinked slow. “It’s….nice. Feels like love.”

You didn’t kiss him then. That had already happened hours earlier — fast, breathless, against the door of his room when you’d come by to “drop off an extra press schedule” like it hadn’t just been an excuse to see him one more time. No, this wasn’t the kind of moment that asked for a kiss.

This was the kind that asked for stillness. For warmth. For someone who made the silence feel less like absence and more like a place to rest.

Later, when the chill started to bite at your hands, he’d taken one of yours and tucked it under his hoodie, against his chest. You’d felt his heartbeat there — not racing, not wild — just steady. Solid. Like he was anchoring himself to you. Or maybe the other way around.

“I wish we had more nights like this,” you’d whispered.

He’d said, “Then let’s make more.”

Like it was easy. Like time would always bend to your will. Like love was enough.

And maybe, for a little while, it was.

But love — real love — doesn’t always arrive gently. Sometimes it barrels in with all the weight of two people trying to outrun who they are. And Lando, for all his charm and humor, was still afraid of stillness. He was a man made for motion. And you? You started to feel like the one thing that made him pause.

At first, that felt like a gift.

Later, it started to feel like a burden.

The breakup wasn’t one big blowout. No plates thrown. No screaming. No grand betrayal.

It was quieter than that.

Quieter, and somehow crueler.

It was a Tuesday again — a different city, different rain — and you’d sat across from him in a hotel room that smelled like expensive soap and exhaustion. You were trying to finish editing a piece about an endurance race while he scrolled absently through his phone, laughing at something a teammate sent him. And you looked at him and thought: he doesn’t know I��m slipping away from him.

So you said it.

“I don’t know who I am with you anymore.”

And he blinked. Didn’t understand.

Thought maybe you were just tired. Maybe it was the stress, the schedule, the job.

But you’d already packed the version of you that used to fit beside him into boxes in your mind. Already rehearsed how to walk away without looking back.

You left two days later. You didn’t cover Formula 1 again after that.

He thought, maybe, it was your way of erasing him.

He didn’t know that you had cried on the plane. That the reassignment was coincidental. That fate sometimes just has really shitty timing.

Now, back in the present, you glance up from your notebook and freeze.

Your eyes meet.

And it’s worse than he imagined.

Because you don’t look angry. You don’t look heartbroken. You don’t even look surprised.

You just look like someone who knows how to brace for impact.

He offers a smile. It feels awkward on his face, like a borrowed shirt that doesn’t quite fit.

You don’t smile back.

You walk toward him — slowly, carefully — like he’s some sleeping animal you’re not sure won’t bite.

“Lando.”

“Hey.” His voice comes out rougher than intended. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I’m freelancing now,” you say. “MotoGP piece. Didn’t think our paths would cross.”

“Yeah,” he says, scratching the back of his neck. “Weird how the world works.”

You nod once, curt and professional. Then, after a beat, you hold up your recorder.

“Can I ask you a few questions for the article?”

And that’s what really kills him. That you can look him dead in the eye, after everything, and ask for a quote.

“Sure,” he says, shrugging. “You gonna twist my words again?”

That gets something out of you — a quiet exhale, the ghost of a smirk. “Only the boring ones.”

There it is. The flicker of you. The version he used to love so hard it made his chest ache.

He looks at you for a long moment.

Then says, softly, “You haven’t changed a bit. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.”

Your eyes don’t waver.

But the pen in your hand stills.

You stare at him like you’re trying to find the lie in the sentence.

But there isn’t one.

You open your mouth. Close it. Try again.

“I’ll leave that one out,” you say, voice tight. “Too sentimental. Doesn’t suit the piece.”

He doesn’t stop you when you walk away.

But later — hours later, long after the interviews end and the paddock starts to clear — he finds a note folded beneath the windshield wiper of his rental car.

Your handwriting, unmistakable. The same slant, the same loops.

One line.

I never stopped loving you. I just stopped knowing how to stay.