#9398

hold me until i find the nerve

like fraser minten nerd and connor bedard bad boy (fly rubbing hands together gif)

fraser helping connor with his work and connor just staring at fraser the whole time. he finally blurts out: "your skin is like porcelain." and fraser dissolves into giggles.

they're laying in connor's dorm and fraser is reading his shakespeare with his glasses on and connor looks over and shuts the book and then obliterates fraser's face with kisses.

connor's actually focusing on his work one day, in the library with frank across from him, when fraser walks in to find a book. connor stares and can't take his eyes off him until frank kicks him hard in the ankle. fraser later asks where the bruise came from and connor can't lie to someone so beautiful.

when connor gets in trouble and scraps his knee and face up from falling on the gravel, fraser sits and picks out the tiny pieces of gravel then wraps and bandages connor's wounds. connor can't help but stare in awe, paying no attention to the college hockey game on the tv.

tags: childhood friends to lovers, vignette, mutual pining, fluff, fraser plays the piano, and connor Notices

Fraser pours the developer. The chemical sting of the fluid fills the tray, sitting thick under the low, bleeding red light of the school’s photography club darkroom. He slides the blank paper into the bath, and he waits. He watches the silver halides react, watch the shadows slowly bleed into existence out of nothing at all.

That is what Connor is to him. A slow exposure. Fraser had spent his entire childhood watching Connor come into focus. The sharp line of his jaw emerging where a child’s softness used to be, the widening of his shoulders, the sudden gravity of his presence in a room. Fraser records it all.

Fraser doesn’t say anything. He just lets the paper soak. He watches the picture form, slowly coming into view.

The shutter speed on his thrifted Canon is fixed, a limitation he can’t change. And Connor is always, always moving too fast. He is a streak of crimson-red on the ice, a smear of light under the flickering porch lamps of basement parties. Fraser stands at the edge of the kitchens, his fingers tightly wrapped around a solo cup, watching Connor share cheap whiskey. Everyone adores him. Everyone wants to catch the hem of his jacket.

Connor thinks he is hiding, but Fraser looks through the viewfinder and sees the hollow space right beneath Connor's ribs. He sees the exhaustion in the curve of Connor's spine when he finally climbs back through Fraser's bedroom window at four in the morning. Fraser wants to click the shutter. He wants to scream, Stop running, let me freeze you right here, with me. But the lens can't track him.

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86524056

Ship: Connor Bedard/Fraser Minten

Chapter 1: "bloody face"

Wordcount: 2,980 words

Summary: Connor swallowed around the lump in his throat. “Did he get hurt?”

“Not exactly,” Lohrei said, cryptically enough that Connor wished he could throttle him from over the phone.

“What does that… Lohrei, just tell me what the fuck is going on.”

“He went into rut,” Lohrei said gravely. “At the end of the game.”

Connor stilled. “What?”

“Yeah,” Lohrei said with a sigh. “It was pretty gnarly.”

Connor's mind whirred.

Minty was in rut. He was in rut. Fucking rut. And Connor was in fucking Chicago.

Or, when Minty goes into surprise rut during a game, Connor gets on a plane.

Well, from my experience, his parents were extremely level-headed when we played on the team with him— and Connor himself, he just handled himself like any other teammate. And that's part of the reason why, you know— teammates as well as I think the media and the teams really appreciate him because he's incredible, right? But he… I mean— he's so humble and he's so gracious. And so, you know, when you talk about this sort of mania, there wasn't. It didn't feel that way when you played on a team with him, it was like any normal kid. So, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say— everybody's hockey path is different, right? And I wouldn't say that there's something going on out West that is not happening here. I would just say that sometimes you get pretty lucky and end up with great teammates and you hope that that persists.