between the margins ▸ fraser minten
PAIRING ▸ fraser minten fm93 x reader
GENRES ▸ fluff, meet cute, fraser minten NERD, fraser minten book worm CONFIRMED
SUMMARY ▸ your weekly trips to your favorite bookstore in boston are routine: browse the shelves, buy another book you don't need, and grab a coffee. they also, apparently, include arguing with a stranger through sticky notes hidden between the pages, who turns out to be professional hockey player fraser minten.
AUTHOR’S NOTE ▸ happy birthday fraser!!! 22!!! i hope he's having the best day ever :) sorry for my absence but i've been busy at my j*b (trigger word sorry) and with life but i am working on a super long fake dating will fic that hopefully i'll finish soon (also where is he)? thank u all for your continued support 200 followers omg!! i just wanted to whip up something short and cute for the bday boy :')
for you, bookstores were supposed to be safe.
quiet. predictable. comfortable.
on weekends away from work, while half of boston seemed determined to spend forty minutes waiting for brunch or squeezing into bars that were somehow already crowded by noon, you could usually be found tucked inside your favorite bookstore in beacon hill.
the place had uneven wooden floors and overstuffed chairs that had definitely seen better days, but over the years, it had become something of a second home.
nothing particularly exciting ever happened there.
unless you counted the occasional passive-aggressive standoff over the last copy of a popular new release.
and that was exactly how you liked it.
until the notes appeared.
the first one fell out of a romance novel while you were standing in the fiction aisle.
you were mid-deciphering whether to justify spending another eighteen dollars on a book your friend had been aggressively recommending for months, when you almost missed it.
a bright yellow sticky note fluttered onto the floor from a nearby book, and landed near your feet.
frowning, you bent down and picked it up.
written across the front in messy, masculine handwriting were three words.
you stared at it, then at the book, then back at the note.
and in the moment, with that book, you found yourself wholeheartedly agreeing.
the ending had sucked: not because it was sad, and not because the couple didn't end up together.
but because you thought the author had spent three hundred pages building tension only to resolve every single conflict in approximately four paragraphs.
literary criminal, in your opinion.
looking up from the note, you glanced around the aisle surreptitiously.
all you saw was a middle aged woman browsing fantasy novels, a young man reading in one of the armchairs near the window, and an employee shelving books.
the sticky note culprit was nowhere to be found.
for a moment, you considered throwing the note away, to be forgotten forever, just a momentary blip in the matrix that was your life.
but then you looked at it again.
such confidence, such conviction, such correctness.
it was almost endearing how someone could feel so strongly about a book that they would leave a note for someone to see. like an angry yelp review in real life.
a smile tugged at the corner of your mouth.
shaking your head, you slid the sticky note back between the pages where you'd found it and continued browsing.
by the time you left the store (a whole eighteen dollars poorer), you'd completely forgotten about it.
or at least, you thought you had.
until two weeks later, when another note appeared.
different book, different shelf, but same yellow note and distinct angry masculine scrawl peeking out from the white pages.
main character deserves jail. -f
you snorted so loudly an elderly woman browsing nearby shot you a look.
"sorry," you whispered, smiling meekly.
the woman continued staring. you turned away. harsh.
but not before slipping the note into your tote bag.
for reasons you couldn't really explain.
and after that, you started finding the yellow notes weekly.
in all genres, time periods, book lengths. always bright yellow, always so aggressively opinionated.
he spent 400 pages being emotionally unavailable for this? - f
the plot twist was visible from space. - f
whoever this person was, he had absolutely no respect for subtlety.
or, apparently, books that most people read.
but eventually you started looking for the notes.
which was ridiculous. you knew that.
you were essentially allowing a complete stranger to influence your saturday bookstore routine.
yet every saturday, after grabbing your coffee and making your usual lap through the store, you found yourself scanning shelves for flashes of bright yellow.
wondering if sticky note guy had visited recently, wondering what he'd read.
sometimes you'd discover three or four notes in one visit. sometimes none at all.
those weekends were strangely disappointing.
because you didn't know this person.
had never seen this person.
and, for all you knew, he could be completely unbearable. an angry, bostonian man whose one plan was to change the literary future of certain readers based off of what he thought was right.
whenever you found a fresh note, your mouth always twitched into a smile before you could stop it.
like you'd stumbled across a message left specifically for you.
even though you knew you hadn't.
then one afternoon, while randomly browsing a book you'd already read, a yellow note slipped into your hand.
masterpiece, no notes. -f
you stared at it. read it again.
and immediately felt annoyance crawl up your spine.
because no. absolutely not.
you thought the third act alone contained at least twelve notes.
you glanced around the aisle. no sign of the mystery reviewer.
then, before you could talk yourself out of it, you dug through your purse. you always carried sticky notes.
quickly, you pulled out a pen and scribbled:
plenty of notes actually: i.e. third act pacing disaster. - y/f/i
before tucking it into the book. it was petty and immature, but in your opinion, completely necessary.
you left the store feeling strangely satisfied, and promptly forgot about it.
until the following weekend.
when you walked by the same book and saw a yellow note sticking out for you.
you glanced around the aisle again, still no sign of him. of course there wasn't.
whoever sticky note man was, he apparently possessed an uncanny ability to vanish the moment you looked for him.
you looked back down at the note, but despite yourself, you smiled.
then you reached into your tote bag: pink sticky note, pen.
you decided to keep it cute with three words.
you tucked it beneath his note, slid the book back onto the shelf, and walked away before you could overthink it.
it wasn't until the following saturday that you found his reply in that aggressively yellow square of paper.
third act pacing was excellent. - f
you rolled your eyes so hard they nearly lodged themselves in the back of your head.
immediately, you fired back.
were we reading the same book? - y/f/i
the response came a week later.
yes. but apparently only one of us understood it. - f
wow. the absolute audacity.
for one brief, deeply immature moment, you considered throwing the entire novel across the bookstore. instead, you calmly placed it back on the shelf.
then muttered, "unbelievable."
an employee shelving books nearby glanced over. you smiled innocently.
after that...things escalated.
what had started as the occasional anonymous opinion somehow transformed into a full-fledged literary rivalry.
you stopped wandering aimlessly through the bookstore. you came a few times a week instead of your beloved saturday trip.
you developed a system: coffee first. then you scanned fiction. new releases. historical fiction, then romance.
always keeping an eye out for flashes of bright yellow. you ignored how the workers definitely thought you were psychotic.
sometimes he found the books first. sometimes you did.
either way, someone always had something to say.
one week, tucked inside a mystery novel, you found:
protagonist was justified. - f
you nearly laughed. your response appeared beneath it before you'd even finished browsing the aisle.
in committing a felony??? - y/f/i
it wasn't that serious. - f
it was first-degree murder. - y/f/i
enemies to lovers is overrated. - f
this book made me cry. - f
that's because you're weak. - y/f/i
that's because i have real feelings. - f
you found yourself laughing more in bookstores than you ever had before.
occasionally, you'd catch yourself reaching for a book you had absolutely no interest in reading simply because you wondered if he'd left a note inside.
you still had absolutely no idea who he was. just a hand and strong opinion you could recognize instantly. an opinion you'd become strangely invested in arguing with.
and a growing collection of bright yellow and pink sticky notes that neither of you seemed willing to stop leaving.
but at some point, the curiosity became impossible to ignore.
you started wondering about him.
...okay, maybe a little in a weird way.
you wondered how old he was, whether he maybe was a student procrastinating on assignments.
or an english professor determined to humble bestselling authors one sticky note at a time.
maybe he was one of the businessmen you always saw ordering coffee from the café before disappearing upstairs.
maybe he was the retired man who spent every tuesday morning reading by the window.
for all you knew, sticky note guy could've been seventy-two years old with an exceptional hatred for poorly paced third acts.
you had absolutely nothing to go off besides one initial and increasingly recognizable handwriting.
which somehow made the mystery worse.
sometimes you'd think you'd spotted him.
a young guy lingering in fiction. someone slipping a book back onto a shelf. someone carrying a stack of sticky notes. but every theory fell apart as quickly as it formed.
he remained frustratingly anonymous.
and somehow that almost made it more fun.
because without faces or names, the only thing that mattered were the words.
as weeks passed, those words started changing. they weren't always just arguments anymore.
one week you left a recommendation tucked inside a novel you'd loved.
two days later you saw be another sticky note waiting, his own recommendation.
read it. you'll probably hate it. -f
which somehow only made you want to read it more.
eventually, the notes stopped being entirely about books. little pieces of yourselves began slipping through the cracks.
never intentionally. just accidentally.
you learned that he apparently worked ridiculous hours, at a job where he was sometimes away for weeks on end.
one note apologized for taking two weeks to respond, before diving into a scalding review.
sorry, i was travelling for work. read this on the plane and wished i could jump off - f
another appeared tucked inside a poetry collection.
if i drink one more coffee this week, i think my heart might explode. - f
you responded immediately.
maybe stop after...five? -y/f/i
you also learned he had wildly inconsistent taste.
he adored literary fiction. had an alarming obsession with sports biographies.
and, for reasons you never understood, willingly read books he knew he'd hate just so he could complain about them to you afterward.
he, meanwhile, learned things about you too.
that you refused to finish books you weren't enjoying. which he called "quitter behavior."
that you annotated your favorite novels. which he claimed was "vandalism."
that you cried during dog movies. which he'd discovered after recommending one completely by accident.
old yeller??? why would you do this to me? - y/f/i
i thought it'd be wholesome. - f
you're paying for my therapy. - y/f/i
and somehow he figured out you owned an unreasonable number of tote bags. you still weren't entirely sure how.
until one afternoon you found:
either you have thirty-seven tote bags or i've accidentally been arguing with multiple women. - f
you stared at the note for a full minute before laughing and writing back.
do you know it's rude to ask a woman that. - y/f/i
his response the next week was immediate.
so it is thirty-seven. - f
neither of you ever asked for names. or phone numbers.
there was something strangely perfect about knowing each other only through ink and sticky notes.
it felt old-fashioned. like exchanging letters with someone you'd never met, a pen pal through the books.
you always had a few days to think of your response.
a few days to wonder if he'd answer.
and a few days to look forward to seeing his handwriting again.
somehow, neither of you seemed in any hurry to change that. maybe it would've stayed that way forever, only known by your first initials and differing opinions.
another week spent wondering if he'd replied.
until the bookstore changed everything.
every spring, the store hosted a handful of small book club discussions with authors.
nothing too formal, just coffee and pastries. and far too many people convinced literary-wise the color blue symbolized the downfall of modern society.
normally, you skipped them.
you loved reading, but you did not necessarily love discussing books deeply with strangers.
apparently, sticky note man felt the same.
because in six months of anonymous correspondence, neither of you had ever once mentioned attending one.
but one day, then the bookstore announced a discussion with one of your favorite authors.
and well, you couldn't exactly miss that.
so, on a rainy saturday morning, you arrived twenty minutes early. coffee in hand, tote bag over your shoulder.
fully prepared to silently judge everyone else's opinions.
the discussion wasn't scheduled to start for another fifteen minutes, and only a handful of people had arrived.
an employee arranged chairs into an area near the front. someone browsed the staff recommendations.
and across the room, tucked into a chair beside the windows, sat a guy reading.
very cute: glasses. bruins cap pulled low, but you could see curls peeking out from the bottom.
one foot tucked underneath him, completely absorbed in whatever book rested in his hands.
you looked for maybe three seconds, shamelessly checking him out.
then forced yourself to look away. not your business. not why you were here.
you took another sip of coffee, and set your tote bag on the chair beside you. and that's when you noticed them, and took a double take.
your eyes caught the color before your brain processed what you were seeing.
everywhere: sticking out between the pages of his book. tucked inside a notebook resting beside his coffee. a small stack sitting neatly on the table.
your stomach dropped and you couldn't tell if it was in fear, joy, or excitement. or a strange mix of all three.
you stared. the handwriting.
even from a few feet away, you knew it like the back of your hand. you would've recognized that aggressively slanted handwriting anywhere.
there was absolutely no way.
and almost as if he felt you staring, the guy looked up. his eyes drifted across the room, and landed on you.
then automatically dropped to the bright pink sticky notes poking out of one of your many tote bags.
the exact hot shade he'd apparently been arguing with for the better part of six months.
his expression shifted instantly and you saw multiple emotions pass through his face. confusion. recognition. complete disbelief.
he looked back at your face, then your tote bag. then your face again.
behind the register, one of the bookstore employees sitting followed your line of sight and immediately let her forehead fall against the counter with a dull thunk.
silence. an embarrassingly long silence of you two staring at each other, frozen in what could only be…fear? you were too shocked to find out what it was exactly.
finally, you lifted a finger and pointed across the room. "you."
his finger slowly came up too. "you!"
you stomped over to his table. "you wrote 'main character deserves jail.'"
he stood, and you noticed how he towered over you. "you wrote 'learn media literacy.'"
he scoffed. "it was rude."
you couldn't help but smile a little. "and somehow you survived."
somewhere behind the counter, the employee made a strangled noise like she was physically fighting for her life not to laugh.
you barely noticed, because this wasn't what you'd imagined. not even close.
sticky note guy wasn't seventy-two. he wasn't an english professor. he wasn't some grumpy businessman hiding from the world.
he was annoyingly attractive, seemingly your age, and unfortunately, just your type. which somehow felt deeply unfair.
he looked equally thrown, like he'd also spent months inventing a completely different person.
"you..." he started slowly, like he didn't know where to start. his eyes flicked toward your tote bag.
"you own the thirty-seven tote bags."
your jaw dropped. "it's thirty-two."
"i cannot believe that's what you took away from this."
he rubbed the back of his neck, clearly realizing this wasn't the smooth introduction he'd probably hoped for.
because after six months of anonymous arguments, he'd apparently prepared rebuttals. not conversation.
finally, he sighed. "you're the reason i read three hundred pages of a book i absolutely hated."
"you said it got better."
you made a face. "it did!"
"it won three literary awards."
he smiled. "people make mistakes."
the employee behind the counter gave up entirely, disappearing into the back room laughing. and somehow, that broke the tension.
you laughed first. he smiled again, then laughed too.
and suddenly it wasn't awkward anymore. because this wasn't really a stranger, not entirely. this was the person who'd spent six months ruining your saturdays.
the person whose handwriting you could recognize before you recognized his face.
the person whose opinions were consistently terrible.
and, rather unfortunately, he was cute.
he rubbed the back of his neck.
"i guess we should probably graduate from initials."
you smiled. "hmm…i don't know."
his eyebrows lifted in surprise.
"i've gotten pretty attached to the whole first initial thing."
he laughed. "oh have you?"
you smirked. "it's mysterious. very james bond. sexy, even."
he nodded thoughtfully. "i was kind of fond of it too."
"see? we already had a system."
then he held out his hand. "fraser."
after six months of wondering, theorizing, and building an entire person around one messy initial, he was just...fraser.
you slipped your hand into his, not expecting the handshake. "y/n."
"nice to officially meet you."
he smiled. "feels weird."
"i kind of feel like i already know you."
you laughed softly. "that's because you kinda do."
that was the strangest part, there wasn't any awkward small talk. no searching for something to say.
he already knew you abandoned books halfway through if they bored you.
that you cried over fictional dogs.
that you annotated your favorite novels.
that you owned an alarming number of tote bags.
and you already knew he survived almost entirely on coffee.
that he had questionable literary opinions.
that he'd willingly finish books he hated just so he could complain about them afterward.
you'd somehow skipped straight past strangers, all the awkward small talk people usually stumbled through when they first met.
you already knew the important things.
everything else...you figured you'd learn eventually.
meeting fraser, unfortunately, changed almost nothing. which was probably the most confusing part.
you didn't suddenly start flirting.
if anything, you argued more.
the only difference was that now, instead of leaving passive-aggressive sticky notes inside books, you were given the blessing to deliver your terrible opinions directly to his face.
you both now coordinated your trips to the bookstore, which unfortunately for those around you, ended in some sort of bickering round between you two in between the bookshelf aisles.
fraser didn't even look up from the book he'd been flipping through next to you. "no..i'm not."
you snatched the novel out of his hands.
he looked down at you immediately. "hey."
without another word, you flipped to page two hundred and fourteen, and held it open in front of him.
and pointed dramatically. "exhibit a."
your smile disappeared and you walked away. "i'm leaving."
"you've been saying that for twenty minutes."
"but this time i seriously mean it."
mostly because fraser followed you into the next aisle.
after that, recommendations became a competition.
not because either of you trusted the other's taste. far from it. you simply needed evidence.
"you're telling me this is your favorite book?"
he waved it in your face. "top five."
"i can't wait to hate it."
"i'll be expecting a formal apology once you actually read it."
"don't hold your breath."
three days later, you marched into the bookstore holding the novel in one hand. fraser looked up from where he'd been pretending to read in his unassigned assigned seat. "well?"
you slumped on the couch next to him, ignoring the heat where your thighs touched."chapter nineteen."
you groaned, accepting defeat. "you were right."
his grin was immediate. "say it again so i can record it?"
as for the sticky notes, they never disappeared.
they just evolved. they became longer, reviews scratched on notebook paper made for later discussion.
less "you're objectively wrong."
more: page 142. explain yourself.
eventually they weren't even attached to books anymore. sometimes you'd find one waiting underneath your coffee cup.
don't say i never do anything for you. -f
or tucked inside the tote bag you'd carelessly left beside him.
you're five minutes late. i'm counting this as a win. -f
you'd roll your eyes. then write back anyway.
eventually, the notes became plans.
boston common, saturday, two? -f
you responded underneath.
his answer appeared later that afternoon.
because i finished the book.
i need to explain why you're wrong. -f
somehow, those saturday afternoons with plans turned into entire days.
one bookstore became three. three became five.
you wandered through beacon hill. crossed into cambridge because fraser insisted there was "a better used bookstore."
you made him admit that, eventually.
hours disappeared without either of you noticing.
sometimes you'd end up sitting shoulder to shoulder, cross-legged on the floor between shelves, surrounded by stacks of books neither of you intended to buy.
debating fictional characters with the seriousness of constitutional lawyers.
an employee would eventually walk by.
you'd both say at the same time. "we're almost done."
you were never almost done.
one afternoon, fraser showed up carrying two identical paper bags.
you frowned. "why did you buy two copies?"
he shrugged like it was obvious. "because if we only have one copy, i have to wait for you to finish."
he held one out. "this way we can annotate at the same time. and compare after."
you blinked. "that's actually kind of smart."
eventually, the bookstore and the notes weren't enough.
phone numbers were exchanged. not because either of you had planned to.
because you'd accidentally wandered into opposite sides of the store and spent fifteen minutes trying to find each other.
"this is ridiculous," you muttered.
he put out a hand towards you. "give me your phone."
you smiled. "fraser, are we finally becoming technologically advanced?"
he bumped your shoulder. "don't ruin the moment."
before long, the messages between you two never really stopped. it was like one ongoing conversation between you two.
pictures of books, voice notes complaining about endings, links to interviews with authors.
photos of coffees captioned:
he'd text you after practice, you'd text him during lunch at work. you'd call each other when he was away for a game. sometimes neither of you had anything important to say.
neither of you could remember who'd started inviting the other anymore. it just happened.
your weekends became fraser. your lunch breaks became fraser. every time you finished a book, the first thought was i need to tell fraser.
the bookstore employees stopped saying "welcome in" when you entered. they just asked, "where's fraser today?"
one saturday, you wandered into the bookstore a little later than usual.
before you could even look around, the cashier smiled. "he's upstairs."
heat crept up your neck. you mumbled a quiet thanks before making your way upstairs.
and there he was, all 6'2 of him cross-legged on the floor in the fiction section. he barely looked up as your footsteps approached.
you glanced at your watch. "by three minutes."
you rolled your eyes, dropping onto the floor beside him. "so dramatic."
he slid a book into your lap. "read this."
you looked down at the cover. "am i going to hate it?"
you opened to the first page, a bright yellow sticky note waited for you.
don't skip ahead this time. -f
you laughed, and without thinking, you reached into your tote bag for your stack of bright pink sticky notes.
you pulled one free, wrote your reply, and tucked it between the pages before handing the book back.
he glanced down and smiled.
he looked up at you. "why are you the way you are?"
you smiled sweetly. "and yet..."
you stood, grabbing your coffee. "you keep buying me books."
he laughed, shaking his head and laughing loudly as he followed you deeper into the shelves.
and as it turns out, bookstores were still safe.
they just weren't particularly quiet anymore.
AUTHOR’S NOTE ▸ i hope you guys enjoyed and are having a good summer!! you can find my masterlist here <3
