Omg How Sweet - Blog Posts
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.
