He was holding onto Chuck like his life depended on it. This was the first time he had ever seen someone die in front of him (that he could remember), and it was his little brother, basically. It was this figure of hope and childlike innocence who died in front of him, murdered before his eyes, and Thomas is desperate to save him, to keep him alive, to bring him back. But he can't, and that's what moves the plot of the entire story forward. Chuck gave him his voice, his reason to fight WICKED. Thomas becomes an enormous threat simply because of 1. his impulsiveness, and 2. his influence. Multiple times throughout the films and books, Thomas talks his way out of bad situations or talks the other gladers into joining him against WICKED. (ex. Jorge and the Cranks, talking the gladers into going after Minho, convincing them to cover for him in the Scorch Trials.) His voice, his convincingness, his willingness to do whatever it takes to stop WICKED, that's his greatest asset. But that little boy, that innocent kid who loved Chuck dearly, who let him get close so fast, he died in the maze, in that sub-level of the compound. That was the price he had to pay to save countless lives: to lose part of himself.
Throughout The Scorch Trials, this version of Thomas is more reserved, quiet. He's still him, but he no longer feels at home or at peace all the time. He loses Winston, and then he loses Minho, which drives him forward.
In The Death Cure, he looks almost at peace in the beginning, even when Minho isn't there, because Newt is. And then Newt gets the Flare and yells at Thomas. And Thomas, all of the sudden, loses a piece of himself. He stops smiling, laughing, and he becomes more serious. He only smiles when he finds Minho with Newt, and for that one singular moment, he is at peace. He was happy.
And then, poor, poor Newt can't hang on any longer, and he snaps at Thomas. He tries to kill him, and in his desperation, Thomas kills Newt. AND THIS FUCKING SCENE. Thomas looks numb; he looks so numb, and he looks tired. Tired of fighting, tired of running, of loving, of losing the people he loves most in the world. He clings to Newt so weakly, like he's lost too many people to know that Newt's too far gone to be saved. And then he walks away. He walks away to give himself up to WICKED. Wordlessly. Because while Chuck was the one to give Thomas his voice, Newt takes it away. Thomas pushes everyone away, except Teresa. She gives him hope in what he thought was going to be his final moments, and then she's gone. And Thomas lives. He lives, but he is completely alone, because no one else was that close to Chuck, to Teresa, to Newt. No one else shares his exact feelings, and so he is now isolated, because the second Thomas died in the ashes and fires of the Last City with Newt and Teresa. Thomas loses another part of himself to WICKED, but it's just a sacrifice. He doesn't save anyone else by giving up a part of himself; he just loses it.
The first Thomas dies with Chuck.
The second dies with Newt and Teresa.
All that's left is this empty shell of a boy, holding a gun up to someone's head but not being able to shoot it, breaking down at the mere mention of Newt, crying as he loses the last person that he loved.
But my point is; those two constants are ones He never considered actually losing even though it was such a risk he never thought about it like that until it happened
Today I wanted to talk about Kyle Bassinga. Kyle was a 21 year old man from Georgia, whose family described him as "a kind, thoughtful, and smart young man who loved nature, music, and the people around him". Kyle Bassinga was killed on February 18th 2026, just ten days after his birthday. He was found hanging from a tree in a park.
The police ruled it a suicide. The family and local community demanded an investigation. The police refused to change their ruling.
I know this website it too white for this to really go anywhere, but an understanding of the present reality of white supremacy in the United States is just so important to transfeminism here. Lynchings never stopped, white supremacy never went away, you just stopped looking.
I couldn't miss an opportunity to make epic geological phenotypes for eridians:D them rocks will look fly as hell on my watch!
Nerding out under the cut:)
For those interested, the igneous phenotype is inspired by granitic pegmatites, with hexagonal beryl crystals growing from it (of the aquamarine variety)
The sedimentary fella is a BIF, or a banded iron formation - a type of chemical sedimentary rock recording the years following the Great Oxygenation Event, with alternating bands of red jasper and magnetite/iron oxides:)
And the metamorphic eridian is inspired by an amphibolite, containing garnet gem porphyroblasts:)
it's graduation night and fraser minten finally decides confessing to his academic rival and longtime crush is somehow less terrifying than losing valedictorian to her.
﹙ ⓘ ﹚ warnings: non nhl!au ( high school au ), angst, slow burn romance, elements of humor. nerd x nerd, mutual pining, idiots to lovers / rivals to lovers, usa education system instead of canadian ( purely because i don't know how it works and i want this to be as accurate as possible !!! ) . 7.4k words
✶ author’s note 𑣲 it's graduation season ... what can i say ??? i really loved writing this fic , not only because i'm graduating myself , but because the dynamic between fraser and y/n was just so cutesy . anyways , thank you once again for all the support you've shown me ... i hope you luv this fic !!!
BY MAY, THE STUDENT COUNCIL BETTING POOL IS NO LONGER ABOUT VALEDICTORIAN — IT’S ABOUT WHEN FRASER MINTEN IS FINALLY GOING TO ADMIT HE’S OBSESSED WITH YOU.
The betting pool starts in AP Government during fourth period.
Which is honestly fitting, because nothing destroys democracy faster than seventeen-year-olds with too much free time and access to Google Sheets.
“Okay,” Connor Bedard says, standing at the front of the classroom like a deeply unserious game show host, “current options are: before prom, after prom, graduation night, tragic airport confession, or they never confess and we all perish from unresolved sexual tension.”
Mr. Sturm doesn’t even look up from grading papers. “No gambling during instructional hours.”
“We’re not gambling,” Connor returns immediately. “We’re crowdsourcing.”
“Mm.”
From the back row, somebody asks, “Can I put twenty on Fraser combusting before he says anything?”
“You can and should,” Connor replies solemnly.
You don’t even bother looking up from your notes. Mostly because if you acknowledge this behavior, it gets worse. Unfortunately for you, Fraser Minten chooses that exact moment to walk into class carrying an iced coffee and three textbooks balanced against one arm. The room falls silent in the way crowds do before a natural disaster.
Connor lights up immediately. “Ah,” he says. “The man of the hour.”
Fraser narrows his eyes. “Why are you standing like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to publicly humiliate me.”
“I would never,” Connor responds in mock affront, hand on chest as though Fraser has mortally wounded him with his words.
“You literally live for it.”
“That’s not true,” Connor says thoughtfully. “I also live for mozzarella sticks.”
Fraser drops into the desk beside yours with a suspicious look that only deepens when your best friend Emma physically turns around in her seat to stare at him. “What?”
Emma smiles too brightly. “Nothing.”
“You’re all acting weird.”
“You’re acting like you’re trying to deny the fact that you’re in love with Y/N,” Connor shoots back.
The class erupts instantly. You choke on your water. Fraser goes completely still beside you.
Mr. Sturm sighs the sigh of a man who absolutely does not get paid enough. “Mr. Bedard,” he says without looking up, “sit down before I call your mother.”
Connor sits immediately.
Fraser stares straight ahead at the whiteboard with the expression of a man moments away from walking directly into traffic. You glance sideways at him despite yourself. His ears are pink, which would be funny if it didn’t make your stomach do deeply humiliating things. Because the worst part of all of this — the truly catastrophic part — is that the student council isn’t wrong.
Fraser Minten is obsessed with you.
You know because you are equally, pathetically obsessed with him. Neither of you knows this, but everybody else does. And it’s messing up your life.
You met Fraser Minten in ninth grade because your biology teacher makes the catastrophic mistake of putting the two smartest people in class at the same lab table.
“Absolutely not,” Fraser says immediately when he realizes.
You blink. “Excuse me?”
“You got the highest mark on the diagnostic.”
“…And?”
He stares at you, unsure if you’re being serious. “And now I have to compete with you directly.”
You stare at him for a long second. Then: “That is maybe the most annoying thing anybody’s ever said to me.”
Fraser considers this. “Probably not a good sign for our teamwork.”
He’s tall already, even at fourteen, all awkward limbs and sharp shoulders and dark hair that keeps falling into his eyes no matter how often he pushes it back. He looks perpetually mildly inconvenienced by the existence of other people. You decide instantly that you dislike him, a decision that lasts about three weeks.
Fraser Minten is irritating in the specific way gifted boys usually are — too observant, too stubborn, too convinced he’s right — but he’s also unexpectedly funny. Not on purpose, though, which makes it worse.
“You labeled the beaker wrong,” you tell him one afternoon.
“No, I didn’t,” he shoots back frustratedly.
“You did.”
“I definitely didn’t.”
You rotate the beaker slowly so the label faces him. There’s a pause as Fraser squints. “OK, in my defense, that’s objectively embarrassing.”
You laugh before you can stop yourself. Fraser looks up immediately. And something strange happens: his entire expression changes. It softens. Not enough for anyone else to notice, yet just enough that you do.
It becomes a pattern after that. You laugh, and Fraser looks at you like he’s hearing the sound for the first time.
By sophomore year, your rivalry has become school lore. Teachers weaponize it constantly. “Actually,” your chemistry teacher says one morning, “Fraser got the highest grade on the quiz.”
You look up from your notebook immediately. “By how much?”
“Two percent.”
Fraser doesn’t even try to hide the smugness. “Tragic,” he says softly.
“Oh, you’re evil.”
“Academically gifted,” he corrects.
“Emotionally insufferable,” you counter, flipping through your planner to schedule another study session for chemistry to ensure that Fraser does not succeed in getting the best score again.
“You wound me.”
Before the next test, you spend the next week studying like your life depends on it out of pure spite. Fraser notices immediately. That’s the first thing he learns accidentally.
The second thing he learns accidentally is that you notice everything about him too. Like the fact that Fraser taps his pencil exactly three times before every test. Or that he hates presenting in front of classes despite being good at it. Or that he always gives away the good highlighters during group projects and keeps the dried-out ones for himself.
It unsettles him, at first, because he likes your attention a little too much.
“You’re staring again,” Connor tells him one day in the cafeteria.
Fraser nearly drops his fork.
“I’m literally not.”
Connor jostles Fraser’s shoulder, chuckling good-naturedly. “You looked at her six times during lunch.”
“That’s not true.”
“You just looked at her while denying it.”
Fraser rubs a hand over his face. “Can you be quiet for like ten seconds? Please.”
Connor leans back dramatically. “Oh my God. It’s terminal.”
“It’s not anything.”
“Mhm.”
Across the cafeteria, you laugh at something Emma says. Fraser’s eyes flick over automatically. Connor catches it instantly and starts cackling loud enough that people turn around.
Fraser considers murder briefly.
The problem with being academic rivals is that eventually it becomes impossible to untangle competition from affection. You don’t remember exactly when Fraser becomes important to you. You just remember moments. Tiny ones.
He stays after debate practice helping you reorganize cue cards because you’re stressed and snappier than usual. You get sick during finals week and find your missed notes color-coded in your locker the next morning. He remembers your coffee order after hearing it once. You remember his birthday despite him never telling you directly.
“You guys are basically dating already,” Emma says one afternoon.
You nearly inhale your iced coffee. “We literally argue every day.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Like an old married couple.”
“That’s horrifying.”
Emma watches Fraser across the library. He’s sitting three tables away pretending not to glance over every thirty seconds. “He likes you so much it’s embarrassing.”
You laugh nervously. “No, he doesn’t.”
Emma gives you a look usually reserved for small children and concussed athletes. “You made him smile during a math test once.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” you huff, trying to refocus on the textbook in front of you.
“He failed a question because he got distracted.”
Your stomach flips. “That did not happen.”
“It literally did.”
You try very hard not to think about it after that, and obviously, you fail catastrophically.
Junior year is when things get dangerous. Junior year is when Fraser stops feeling like your rival and starts feeling like something terrifyingly close to home.
It happens during exam season. You’re both in the public library at eight-thirty at night because neither of you understands moderation. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, rain tapping softly against the windows. You’re hunched over your laptop muttering angrily at a calculus problem when Fraser slides into the seat across from you. “You’re glaring at the screen like it insulted your family.”
“It practically did.”
He glances at the equation once. Then reaches over for your pencil. “Move.”
“Oh, absolutely not.”
“You want help or not?” he asks, blue eyes shining.
You narrow your eyes but shove the worksheet toward him anyway. Fraser leans closer, scribbling across the page while explaining the formula. Maybe it’s exhaustion, or insurmountable stress… or maybe it’s the fact that he smells faintly like cedar and coffee and winter air.
But suddenly you become painfully aware of how close he is. His sleeve brushes yours, his knee knocking against the table. His voice goes softer when he talks directly to you. Your heart starts acting like a complete idiot.
“And then you isolate the variable here,” Fraser says.
You stare blankly. “Right.”
He pauses. “You didn’t hear a single word I just said.”
“Hm?”
Fraser’s mouth twitches. Then he smiles, from ear-to-ear. Not the smug little grin he gives during debates, not the sarcastic one.
A real one, warm enough to make your chest hurt.
“You’re hopeless,” he says quietly.
You think, very suddenly and very horribly: I could love him forever.
The realization nearly kills you on impact.
Fraser realizes he’s in love with you because of a hoodie, which is humiliating, honestly.
It’s December. Snow everywhere. You’re wearing his hockey hoodie because you spilled coffee on your uniform earlier and he handed it to you without thinking. “You can keep it for the day,” he says casually.
Your face lights up so brightly it physically stuns him. “Really?”
Fraser immediately forgets how human speech works. “Uh. Yeah.”
You pull the hoodie on over your head right there in the hallway. It’s too big on you. The sleeves cover your hands completely. And Fraser’s brain short-circuits so hard he almost walks directly into a locker.
Macklin Celebrini witnesses the entire thing. “Oh my God,” he whispers afterward. “You looked at her like a Victorian man seeing an ankle.”
“Shut up.”
“She wore your hoodie and you nearly proposed.”
“I hate you,” Fraser groans.
“No, you love her.”
Fraser throws a granola bar at his head.
Unfortunately, Mack is correct. That night, Fraser realizes something deeply inconvenient: every future he imagines automatically includes you in it.
College acceptances. Graduation. Random coffee shops at twenty-three. Apartments. Road trips. You exist in all of them naturally, like you belong there.
The thought terrifies him. Mostly because he has absolutely no idea whether you feel the same.
By senior year, the entire school is exhausted by both of you. “Just kiss already,” your physics partner says one afternoon after you and Fraser spend fifteen minutes arguing over velocity equations.
“We are not —”
“We’re literally just studying,” Fraser says simultaneously.
The poor guy looks between you both. “You finished each other’s sentences twice.”
Silence. Fraser clears his throat. “Coincidence.”
“Right.”
You avoid looking at each other for the rest of class, which lasts approximately six minutes. Because Fraser notices when you start chewing the inside of your cheek during the worksheet. “You’re stressed.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re doing the thing.”
You blink. “What thing?”
“The —” Fraser gestures vaguely toward his own mouth. “That.”
Heat crawls up your neck in embarrassment. “Oh.”
He reaches over absentmindedly and slides your pencil into your hand. “Stop overthinking,” he says softly. “You already know this stuff.”
And there it is again. That unbearable gentleness he only ever seems to have with you. Your chest aches so badly it’s ridiculous. “Thanks,” you mumble.
Fraser looks at you for a second too long. Quietly, he murmurs: “Anytime.”
By May, graduation hangs over the school like a countdown clock. Everything feels temporary suddenly. Last pep rally, last exams, last cafeteria lunches.
People cry over stupid things. Teachers get sentimental. Even Fraser seems off-balance lately. More distracted. Quieter around you sometimes, which is saying something, because Fraser has never exactly been subtle.
You catch him staring at you constantly now, as though he has something to say and no idea how to say it. It’s becoming a problem.
“You know he’s gone for you, right?” Emma asks one afternoon while you both decorate graduation caps.
You carefully glue a rhinestone into place. “He’s competitive. That’s different.”
Emma stares at you, bursting out laughing so hard the next second that she nearly drops her glue gun. “Oh my God,” she wheezes. “You actually believe that.”
“I’m serious.”
“No, listen to me carefully.” She grabs your wrist dramatically. “That boy looks at you like you invented sunlight.”
Your face warms instantly. “You’re exaggerating.”
“I watched him carry your backpack for twenty minutes last week.”
“He offered.”
“He looked honored to do it.”
You open your mouth. Close it again. Unfortunately, she’s not entirely wrong. That’s the dangerous part.
The tiny moments are getting harder to ignore. The way Fraser automatically saves you a seat in every class, the way he remembers every insignificant detail you mention, the way his eyes always find you first in crowded rooms.
It feels like standing too close to the edge of something enormous. The scariest part about all of this? You think he feels it too.
The problem is that once you start noticing it, you can’t stop. Fraser’s attention becomes impossible to escape after that conversation with Emma. Not because he suddenly changes. That’s what makes it worse — he’s always been like this with you.
You’re just seeing it properly now.
Like somebody adjusted the focus on a camera lens and suddenly everything sharpens all at once.
“You’re staring at him again,” Emma says.
You nearly choke on your smoothie. “I am not.”
“You’ve looked at him four times in the last minute.”
“That’s normal.”
“It’s really not.”
Across the courtyard, Fraser is sitting on the low brick wall outside the science building with Connor and a few other guys from student council. His tie is loosened from the heat, sleeves rolled messily to his elbows, dark hair falling into his eyes while he argues about something with the deeply offended seriousness only Fraser Minten could apply to lunchtime conversation.
You can’t hear him from here, but you know exactly what he looks like when he’s ranting.
One hand moving when he talks. Eyebrows pulling together. Mouth twitching every time he realizes he’s getting too invested in something stupid.
You know the cadence of his laugh. You know the exact shape of his handwriting. You know he pretends not to care about spirit week but still participates every single year. You know he listens when you talk, pays attention to everything you say because it matters.
It’s horrible.
“God,” you mutter, horrified with yourself. “I’m actually doomed.”
Emma beams. “Finally. Character development.”
Then, as if summoned by your humiliation itself, Fraser looks up, straight at you.
Your stomach immediately betrays you. The thing is — Fraser’s gaze doesn’t skim past people. No, it stays, just to torture your already lovesick and confused heart.
Even from across the courtyard, you feel the exact second he notices you looking. His expression changes instantly. Like a reflex that he can’t help.
Connor follows Fraser’s line of sight toward you, slowly lowering the sports drink he’s holding. “Oh my God,” you see him mouth dramatically.
Fraser elbows him hard without looking away from you. You snap your eyes down to your phone so fast you nearly give yourself whiplash. Emma is fully crying laughing beside you. “This is the best day of my life,” she chokes out.
“I hate everybody.”
Emma shakes her head. “No, you love Fraser Minten.”
You bury your face in your hands.
Fraser, unfortunately, is also having the worst day of his life. “Okay,” Connor says calmly, “I need you to know that you looked genuinely enchanted just now.”
Fraser keeps his eyes fixed on the calculus worksheet in front of him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You looked at her like she personally hung the moon.”
“That’s dramatic,” Fraser argues.
“You’re dramatic.”
Fraser exhales through his nose, and Connor leans closer. “You realize this has become a public health issue, right?”
“What has?”
Connor rolls his eyes. “The unresolved yearning. Everything.”
Fraser’s eye twitches. “I’m going to hit you.”
“No, seriously. There are freshmen placing bets now,” Connor tells him.
“That cannot be true.”
“Someone made a pie chart.”
Fraser freezes. “…A what.”
“A pie chart,” Connor repeats. “Categories include: ‘Mutual Pining,’ ‘Academic Foreplay,’ and my personal favorite, ‘Fraser Minten Experiences Emotions and Immediately Panics.’”
Fraser closes his eyes briefly. “I need to transfer schools.”
“Not until you ask her out.”
Fraser’s chest tightens automatically at the idea. Ask her out.
Like it’s easy, as though he hasn’t spent the last three years carefully balancing himself on the edge of something terrifying. What nobody understands — not Connor, not the student council, not even you — is that Fraser’s not scared of rejection.
He’s scared of losing this. The space between you that belongs entirely to the two of you, the banter, the studying together, the way you automatically walk beside him in hallways like it’s instinct.
If he says something and you don’t feel the same, all of that changes. And Fraser doesn’t think he could survive that.
“You’re spiraling again,” Connor says.
“I’m literally sitting here.”
“You have the expression of someone who was just told your childhood dog never actually liked you best.”
Fraser glares at him. Against his better judgment, his eyes drift back across the courtyard.
You’re laughing at something Emma says. Sunlight catches against the necklace at your throat, and Fraser feels it again.
That awful, aching thing in his chest that’s become permanent.
God.
There’s nothing he can do anymore but pray he doesn’t fuck this all up.
There’s a reason people think you and Fraser are dating already. Actually, there are several reasons.
One: you spend almost every afternoon together.
Two: your arguments sound suspiciously like flirting.
Three: Fraser once skipped hockey practice to help you finish a presentation and nearly got into a fistfight with his coach over it.
(“You skipped practice for a slideshow?” Connor had asked in disbelief afterward.
Fraser’s response was immediate. “It was worth thirty percent.”)
But the biggest reason is this: you fit together too naturally, two puzzle pieces that don’t realize they’re already connected.
It shows up in little ways. How Fraser automatically hands you the blue gummy candies because he knows they’re your favorite. The times where you steal his fries without asking and he pretends to complain every single time. And how both of you reach for the same textbook simultaneously during study sessions.
It’s muscle memory now: comfort, routine.
Sometimes it scares you how easy being around him feels. For example, today. You’re in the library after school, surrounded by enough textbooks to legally qualify as psychological warfare. Fraser sits across from you, glasses slipping slightly down his nose while he annotates an article for history class.
Your laptop hums quietly between you. The library is mostly empty except for a few exhausted seniors cramming for finals, and you should be studying just like them.
Instead, you’re watching Fraser push his sleeves up his forearms absentmindedly while reading. Which cannot be classified as productive behavior at all.
“You’ve been on the same paragraph for six minutes,” Fraser says without looking up.
You jolt. “I’m studying.”
“You’re staring at me.”
Heat floods your entire body instantly. “No, I’m not.”
Fraser finally glances up. His mouth lilts to the side. “You literally are.”
“I was thinking,” you protest, red flags blooming on your cheeks.
“About?”
Your brain immediately evacuates your skull. “Oh my God,” you say weakly. “You’re actually so annoying.”
Fraser laughs quietly. It hits you directly in the sternum. “You’re deflecting.”
You cock your head. “You’re distracting.”
“That sounds like an iss-you, not an iss-me.”
You narrow your eyes at him. Fraser grins slightly and returns to highlighting his notes like he didn’t just short-circuit your entire nervous system. God, it should be illegal for someone to look that good while discussing constitutional law.
“This is harassment,” you mutter.
“What is?”
“You existing near me academically.”
Fraser snorts. “You’re cute when you’re losing arguments.”
Your brain fully stops functioning. Fraser freezes too, because he didn’t mean to say that out loud. Your eyes widen and his ears immediately turn pink. The library suddenly feels about twelve thousand degrees warmer.
Fraser clears his throat. “I mean —”
“No, no,” you say quickly, pulse skyrocketing. “Let’s unpack that.”
“There’s nothing to unpack.”
“You just called me cute,” you state matter-of-factly.
“I didn’t.”
“You literally did.”
Fraser looks genuinely cornered now, which would be funny if your heart wasn’t trying to escape through your ribcage. “I said —” He stops. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh my God,” you whisper dramatically. “Fraser Minten has game.”
“I actually don’t.”
“I need a second to process this.”
He groans and drops his forehead briefly against the table. You stare at him helplessly. This is the problem: every time you think maybe you’re imagining things, Fraser goes and says something like that in the softest voice imaginable and completely ruins your ability to think rationally.
“You’re smiling,” Fraser says without lifting his head.
Your hand flies to your mouth immediately.
“No, I’m not.”
“You are.”
“You can’t prove that,” you retort.
Finally he looks up again. There it is, that look. The one that feels unbearably intimate for reasons you still can’t explain. Fraser’s eyes flick over your face slowly before settling on your mouth for half a second too long, returning back to your eyes. Your stomach flips violently. “You’re impossible,” he says quietly.
The words should sound insulting. Instead, they sound dangerously close to fond.
Later that night, you lie in bed staring at your ceiling while replaying the entire interaction like a deeply embarrassing movie montage.
You’re cute when you’re losing arguments.
Normal people do not say things like that to people they’re just rivals with. Right?
Unless Fraser’s naturally flirty. Which he absolutely is not. The boy once got nervous ordering food at a drive-thru. You know because you were there.
Flashback: Junior year.
Regional debate finals. You and Fraser are in the backseat of Macklin’s car at ten-thirty at night after winning first and second place respectively. You’re exhausted. Fraser looks unfairly pretty under passing streetlights. Which feels deeply inconsiderate of him, honestly.
“Can somebody just pick a restaurant?” Macklin complains from the driver’s seat.
“You pick.”
“No, because every time I pick, Fraser starts googling health inspection reports.”
“They matter,” Fraser says defensively.
“Coward behavior.”
Eventually you end up at a twenty-four-hour burger place.
Connor sends Fraser to order for everyone because “you look the least likely to commit tax fraud.”
He moves closer to the speaker, and there’s a crackle of static. “Hi, welcome to —”
And Fraser immediately forgets every word in the English language. You watch in fascinated horror as this brilliant, terrifyingly composed boy completely malfunctions. “…Uh.”
Macklin starts howling instantly. “Dude.”
“I know,” Fraser hisses, swatting Mack’s hand away.
The employee waits patiently. Fraser grits his jaw like he’s fighting for his life. You’re trying not to laugh, and you fail miserably. A tiny snort escapes you.
Fraser looks over immediately, and there it is again. That expression, as though your laughter physically rearranges his internal organs. He stares for one fatal second too long.
The employee goes: “Sir?”
Fraser nearly combusts.
Afterward, you laughed so hard you cried. Fraser spent the rest of the night pretending to hate you for it. But later, when Connor fell asleep in the front seat during the drive home, Fraser glanced over quietly and said: “I like hearing you laugh.”
Just like that.
Casual, soft, honest. You’d stared out the window the entire rest of the drive because you genuinely didn’t know what to do with your face.
Back in the present, you groan into your pillow. Emma’s right.
This thing between you and Fraser stopped being rivalry a long time ago. It became something else slowly, quietly, without either of you noticing.
The scariest part of all is this: You think Fraser’s standing at the edge of the exact same realization.
Fraser Minten realizes he’s completely, irreversibly in love with you on a Thursday at 11:47 p.m. in the cereal aisle of a twenty-four-hour grocery store. It would almost be romantic if the circumstances weren’t so profoundly stupid.
It starts because Connor forgets a poster board. Again.
“You had one job,” Emma says over speakerphone.
“In my defense —”
“There is no defense.”
Senior prank committee had sounded fun in theory. In reality, it’s mostly sleep deprivation and arguing over tape. Now Fraser is standing under aggressively fluorescent grocery store lighting in pajama pants and a school hoodie while Connor pushes the cart like a man fleeing federal charges.
Connor huffs out a breath. “You’re being dramatic.”
“It’s nearly midnight.”
“And yet here you are.”
“Against my will.”
Connor tosses three bags of chips into the cart. “You know who would’ve remembered the poster board?”
Fraser doesn’t answer. Connor grins devilishly. “Her.” Fraser keeps walking, which is answer enough. “Okay,” Connor says, catching up beside him. “Serious question.”
“No.”
“You didn’t even hear it.”
“I know where this is going.”
“Do you, now?”
“Yes.”
“Great.” Connor beams. “Then answer it.”
Fraser grabs a box of cereal he doesn’t even like just to have something to do with his hands.
“You’re in love with her, right?” The question lands harder than expected. Fraser has thought about it constantly, in terrifying detail, late at night, during classes. In the middle of hockey practice while accidentally skating directly into the boards because you texted him good luck today :) and his brain stopped functioning for a full thirty seconds.
Yet there’s a difference between thinking something and hearing it out loud.
Love.
The word echoes unpleasantly in his chest. Too big, too exposing, too true. Fraser stares at the nutrition label on the cereal box like it personally betrayed him. “I don’t know,” he says finally.
Connor goes silent for the first time all night. With an all-knowing smile, he confirms, “Oh, you’re gone gone.”
Fraser exhales sharply through his nose. He genuinely doesn’t know when it happened. There’s no cinematic moment, with no dramatic lightning strike. It’s just been tiny things stacking on top of each other until suddenly his entire life was built around one person and he didn’t know how to undo it.
Like how he would automatically check if you’ve eaten lunch. Or how he knows your schedule better than his own. Or how he physically cannot enter a bookstore without wondering if there’s something there you’d like.
It’s pathetic. No — worse: it’s involuntary.
“You wanna know how I know it’s bad?” Connor asks.
“No.”
“You look happier when she walks into a room.”
Fraser laughs once under his breath. You affect him instantly, effortlessly. Gravity pulling him in like a magnet. He notices your absence before your presence now. Every classroom feels wrong when you’re not there.
Maybe Fraser could survive all of this if it was just attraction, a simple crush.
But it isn’t. It’s much, much worse.
Fraser knows you in all the small, catastrophic ways that matter. He knows that you reread texts before sending them when you’re anxious, that you always pretend you’re cold when you want someone to offer you their hoodie, that your voice changes when you get genuinely excited about something.
He knows the exact expression you make when you’re trying not to cry, which songs you skip every time they come on, how you twist the rings on your fingers during exams.
Every single thing he learns about you just makes him want to know more.
Fraser suddenly feels exhausted down to his bones. “Oh my God,” he mutters quietly.
Connor pauses, almost colliding with Fraser in the aisle. “What?”
Fraser looks genuinely stricken. “I’m actually in love with her.”
There it is, said aloud, made real.
Connor’s eyes widen immediately like he’s witnessing a historic event. “No way.”
“Don’t react like that.”
“No, sorry, I just — wow. I really thought you’d take another six months.”
Fraser drops his forehead briefly against the shopping cart handle. Now that the realization’s fully landed, everything rearranges itself around it instantly. Every memory becomes unbearable in hindsight. All the times Fraser had to physically stop himself from saying something reckless.
It all clicks together so violently he feels nauseous.
“Oh, this is bad,” he says softly.
Connor blinks. “Most people enjoy being in love.”
“Most people aren’t in love with the person they have a psychological warfare rivalry with.”
“That’s fair.”
Fraser laughs weakly. Then he thinks about you again, about the library earlier.
You’re cute when you’re losing arguments.
Jesus Christ. He said that out loud, and meant it. He means everything around you now without thinking first. That’s what scares him most: you dismantle his self-control accidentally.
“You know what the worst part is?” Fraser says suddenly.
Connor looks delighted. “Absolutely.”
“She doesn’t even realize what she does to me.”
“Oh, buddy.”
“No, seriously.” Fraser runs a hand through his hair in frustration. “She smiles at me and I forget basic motor functions.”
Fraser groans. There are moments — horrifying, humiliating moments — where he genuinely thinks you might feel the same. One instance, out of a thousand he could remember, was last month during movie night at Emma’s house.
Everybody else had fallen asleep eventually. Connor was snoring loud enough to trigger concern. The TV glowed dimly across the room while you and Fraser sat shoulder-to-shoulder on opposite ends of the couch pretending to watch the movie.
At some point your head tipped slowly onto his shoulder. Fraser stopped breathing instantly. You made a tiny sleepy sound and shifted closer unconsciously.
And Fraser… Fraser sat there for two straight hours afraid to move because he thought the moment might disappear. He remembers staring at the top of your head thinking, this could ruin me forever.
The best, permanent way. The kind where no matter what happens after this, nobody else will ever compare.
Fraser feels suddenly dizzy just remembering it. Connor notices immediately. “Oh my God,” he says. “You’re crashout realizing.”
“Please never say that again.”
“You are! Dude, your entire worldview just collapsed in the cereal aisle.”
Fraser laughs despite himself. Beneath all the panic and yearning and emotional devastation sits one terrifying truth, that graduation is three weeks away.
Three weeks.
After that, everything changes. He’ll be heading to the National Hockey League, hopefully alongside Connor and Mack, and the two of you will be living drastically different lives in different cities. The thought hits Fraser so hard his chest physically aches.
What if this is it? What if somebody else gets to know you next? What if somebody else gets your laugh, your late-night rambles, your stupid little doodles in notebook margins?
The jealousy that flares through him is immediate and ugly and visceral.
Fraser stops walking entirely.
“You OK?” Connor asks worriedly.
“No,” Fraser says honestly. Suddenly the future feels terrifying, because he’s scared of growing up without you in it.
And that horrible, crashing realization forces Fraser to confront the truth he’s been avoiding for years. This was never a crush, never just a rivalry. Somewhere between biology labs and debate tournaments and late-night study sessions, you became the most important person in his life.
Fraser has absolutely no idea what to do about it.
Graduation night arrives hot and gold around the edges, caps and gowns blurring together in navy and white.
Outside, Fraser can see parents crowding the bleachers with flowers and cameras and tissues already in hand like they’re preparing for emotional warfare.
And Fraser Minten feels like he’s going to throw up.
Not because of the speech he’s about to give, or the fact that he lost valedictorian to you. Not even because graduation means the terrifying, inevitable end of everything familiar.
No.
Fraser feels sick because you’re standing twenty feet away laughing with Emma, and every single thing inside him has finally reached a breaking point.
Three weeks have passed since the grocery store realization. It’s been three terrible weeks of trying — and failing — to act normal around you afterward. Three weeks of a thousand almosts: almost saying something, almost reaching for your hand, almost blurting out I’m in love with you every time you smiled at him too softly.
But now it’s graduation, all about the last things he will do with you.
That previous day had been his last hallway walk, filled with the last inside jokes he’d shared with you in class. Two days ago, he’d given you his last shoddy excuse to stand beside you without it meaning something bigger.
Fraser suddenly understands why people in old romance novels dramatically perish, because this genuinely feels fatal.
“Dude.” Connor appears beside him, adjusting his cords above his baggy navy gown. “You look haunted.”
Fraser runs a hand through his hair in exasperation. “I am haunted.”
“By love?”
“By you,” he reprimands.
Connor ignores that immediately. “Tonight’s the night.”
Fraser looks physically ill.
“Oh my God, it actually is.” Connor grabs his shoulders. “Wait. Wait, are you finally doing it?”
He glances toward you again automatically, as if by instinct. You’re smiling at something Emma says, graduation cords shining under the gymnasium lights. You’re radiant, and perfect, and everything that Fraser loves all in one person.
You’re the girl of his dreams.
No.
Not yet, you aren’t. That’s the problem. Fraser exhales shakily as he speaks out the truth to Connor. “I can’t graduate and not tell her.”
Connor goes completely silent. “Jesus Christ.”
“Don’t make it weird.”
“You just said the most romantic thing anybody’s ever said at this school.”
“That’s deeply depressing.”
“No, seriously.” Connor looks near tears. “You’re down catastrophically.”
Fraser laughs weakly. The principal starts calling everybody into line. Chaos erupts immediately, with students yelling, somebody already weeping openly behind him, trying to find their alphabetical placement.
In the midst of the mayhem, Fraser falls into step beside you automatically like he always does. You glance over and smile. “You nervous, valedictorian?”
Fraser looks at you and thinks: There will never be another person like you. The realization nearly knocks the breath from him.
You frown slightly. “Fraser?”
He blinks. Right. Human interaction. You hadn’t asked a rhetorical question, which meant that you were expecting an answer, which he was completely and utterly failing at. “Uh,” he says intelligently. “A little.”
“You’ll be fine.” Your shoulder bumps his lightly. “You’re annoyingly good at speeches.”
“You’ve never heard the speech.”
“You color-coded your cue cards.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” he says, raising one eyebrow.
“It means you’ve been preparing since birth.”
Fraser laughs under his breath. It’s so fucking obvious how much he loves you. He loves you so much it’s become unbearable to carry around alone.
“You okay?” you ask softly.
That question almost destroys him. Even now — tonight, of all nights — you’re still paying attention to him first, always him.
Fraser swallows hard. “Yeah,” he lies.
You look at him for one extra second like maybe you know he’s lying. Then your fingers brush briefly against the sleeve of his gown as everybody starts moving forward.
It’s a tiny, miniscule touch. Accidental, and yet Fraser feels it everywhere.
Fraser barely registers any of the beginning segments of the ceremony. Every few minutes, his eyes find you again, and every single time, you’re already looking at him too. It’s unbearable.
The principal steps back toward the microphone. “And finally,” she says, smiling out at the sea of caps and gowns, “this year’s valedictorian.”
Fraser turns instinctively toward you. You turn toward him too. “Go,” he laughs softly, nudging your shoulder when you still haven’t moved. “C’mon, valedictorian.”
You groan. “Don’t call me that.”
“You literally are.”
You roll your eyes at him, but you’re smiling so hard it barely works, and Fraser suddenly has the insane thought that he could live inside this moment forever.
He watches you walk across the stage, watches you shake hands with the principal, watches you step up to the podium afterward, sunlight catching on the bright gold cord around your shoulders.
And then you start speaking. The stadium quiets almost immediately. You’ve always been like this — effortlessly magnetic without trying to be. Your speech is funny at first; you tease teachers. You roast Connor by name for somehow getting gum stuck in his hair during finals week. The crowd laughs so hard Fraser can barely hear your next sentence.
Then your voice softens, and you’re talking about growing up. Discussing fear and change and becoming people none of you recognize yet. About how terrifying it is that this version of everyone only exists for one more hour.
Fraser can’t look away from you. Especially when you glance toward him.
“Some people,” you say carefully, “become part of your life so gradually you don’t even notice it happening. And then one day you realize every important memory you have somehow includes them.” Fraser’s breath catches. “And maybe growing up,” you continue, quieter now, “is realizing success means a little less if there’s no one beside you to turn to afterward.”
The crowd goes silent. Fraser thinks his heart physically stops, because you’re looking right at him when you say it. You smile suddenly, lighter again. “Anyway. Congratulations, Class of 2026. We survived.”
The stadium erupts to its feet. People cheering, whistling, yelling. Fraser claps hard enough his palms sting. After your speech, the rest of the ceremony passes in polychrome, dizzying fragments. Applause blurs into applause into applause, names melting together beneath the heat of the stadium lights. Macklin nearly wipes out crossing the stage and throws in an exaggerated bow afterward like he planned it, which earns a roar of laughter from the crowd.
Then comes the final announcement. “Tassels to the left!”
Thousands of hands move at once, the air electric. Fraser turns his tassel over slowly, and when he looks up again, you’re laughing breathlessly beside him like you can’t believe this is real either.
“On the count of three!” the principal shouts. Everyone grips their caps. “One!” You look at Fraser. “Two!” Fraser looks back at you, eyes shining with unshed tears.
Suddenly neither of you are smiling normally anymore. It’s something bigger than that now. Something cracked wide open and terrifying and hopeful all at once.
“THREE!”
Caps explode into the sky.
The stadium dissolves into absolute pandemonium — screaming and laughter and people grabbing each other in crushing hugs as black graduation caps scatter against the blue evening sky like thrown stars. Standing there in the middle of all of it, Fraser realizes with devastating certainty that no matter where life takes him after tonight — every version of his future has you in it.
You find him in the middle of the crowd. “Hey,” you say quietly when he doesn’t answer, hand squeezing his sleeve gently. “You okay?”
Fraser turns his gaze on you, at the person who turned his entire life inside out without even trying. At the girl he accidentally built a future around in his head years ago, whom he loves so much it scares him.
For the first time in his life, Fraser stops overthinking. “No,” he says honestly.
You blink, surprised. “What?”
“I’m not okay.”
Concern flashes across your face instantly. “Fraser —”
“If I don’t tell you this right now,” he says quietly, voice shaking slightly, “I think I’m gonna regret it for the rest of my life.”
Everything around you fades. The noise, the applause. Even the crowd blurs away.
There’s only Fraser. Only the way he’s looking at you like this matters more than breathing.
Your heart starts pounding violently. “Tell me what?” you whisper.
Fraser laughs once nervously, dragging a hand through his dark black hair. “You know what the worst part is?” he says softly. “Everybody else figured it out before I did.”
Your breath snags in your chest, hope rising like a balloon. Fraser’s eyes don’t leave yours as he confesses, “I kept thinking this was just rivalry.” He laughs shakily again. “Or a crush. Or whatever. I thought maybe I was just competitive.” His voice goes quieter, more intimate. “But then you’d smile at me and suddenly I couldn’t think straight for the rest of the day.”
Your eyes widen slowly.
“Oh,” you breathe.
“Yeah.”
Fraser looks terrified now, completely defenseless in a way you’ve never seen before. “You became…” He stops briefly like the words physically hurt. “You became the first person I wanted to tell things to. The first person I looked for in every room.”
He takes another, vulnerable step closer. “Every future I imagined had you in it before I even realized what was happening. I’m so in love with you,” he says finally, voice rough around the edges. “It’s actually embarrassing.”
There’s a sharp rushing sound in your ears as every single moment rearranges itself all at once. The hoodie, the library glances, the late-night drives.
How Fraser always stayed and looked at you like you mattered more than anyone else.
“You’re lying,” you whisper. Fraser immediately looks stricken. “That sounded worse out loud.” You laugh helplessly through sudden tears. “No, Fraser, I meant to say —” Your voice breaks.
His entire face changes instantly. “Hey,” he says softly, fingers resting on the crook of your jaw.
You shake your head, smiling so hard it hurts. “You absolute idiot.”
Fraser blinks. “What?”
“I’ve been in love with you for years.”
Fraser stares at you like his brain physically short-circuited. “What do you mean?”
You laugh wetly. “See? This is why you didn’t get valedictorian, Minten.”
His mouth falls open slightly. “You —”
“I’m in love with you too,” you repeat.
“You’re serious?”
“Unfortunately.”
Fraser makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a near-death experience, like happiness physically cracked him open. And you think distantly: there he is.
The boy you’ve loved since you were fourteen, who memorized your coffee order and your bad habits and your favorite songs, who looked at you like the answer to a question he’d been trying to solve for years.
“Can I kiss you?” he asks gently, like he’s afraid to say it.
You laugh through your tears. “You took four years to ask me that?”
“I was going through something.”
“That something being stupidity?”
“Severe stupidity.”
You grin helplessly, tugging him lightly on the front of his graduation gown to pull him closer to you. “Kiss me before I change my mind, Mister Salutatorian.”
He kisses you even before you finish your sentence; a boy starved, who’s been holding himself back for years and finally snapped. One hand slides carefully against your waist, the other cupping your jaw like something precious.
You melt instantly. Because oh. Oh, this is what all those almost-moments were leading to.
This.
Him.
You kiss him harder without thinking.
Fraser makes a startled sound against your mouth like he genuinely didn’t expect you to kiss him back with equal desperation… which is honestly offensive.
You pull away just enough to whisper, “You’re an idiot.”
Fraser rests his forehead against yours, smiling so hard it looks painful. “Yeah,” he says softly. “But I’m your idiot now.”
Your heart nearly gives out on the spot. Around you, graduation continues chaotically. But it all feels distant somehow, muted.
Fraser’s looking at you like he just found home after years of being lost, and maybe, just maybe you’re looking at him the exact same way.
Connor spots you both from across the field, immediately reacting like he’s just witnessed a live celebrity proposal. Neither of you even glance over, and Fraser laughs quietly, thumb brushing your cheek.
“You know,” he murmurs, “this whole time I thought I was losing to you.”
You smile softly. “And?”
His eyes flick down to your mouth before returning to your eyes.
For the first time in four years, Fraser Minten finally stops treating love like something he has to win.
“I think,” he answers you gently, “you were the only part I ever wanted.”
big fan that bloodymary is out and proud with it trending, but everyday we breach containment is a singular step closer to markiplier finding out that he is being shipped with ryan fucking gosling, and that is a concept that frightens me
I need the ai bubble to burst so badly. I feel insane. My uncle shows my driving license (a piece of id with my picture, basic info and signature) to chatgpt to figure out what is the code a form ask for. My brother shows my mom's medical report to perplexity to have it explained in lay terms before she brings it to her doctor. All of those pieces of information could have been acquired without putting crucial personal information into the servers of big data. All of those pieces of information could have been acquired without putting crucial personal information into the servers of big data. All of those pieces of information could have been acquired without p
i really love that project hail mary made it so clear how much grace loves earth. describing it to rocky, showing him bits of the culture and nature. the water and the cities. the birds. he sincerely and deeply loves earth.
you don't even have a dog. he had a whole planet. he loved being alive on earth and they took that from him.
tmr modern au where Ivy trio are put in a group together in cooking class and decide to make stew but end up disagreeing on what to put in it so they all put their own things in the stew and accidentally replicate the 3 day perpetual blinding stew
romaincrisis
titsay
gummygunk
annaxmalina
stormborns
izzy806
