#idk i've seen other ya media that pulled off romance between two shy characters.

[hazellvsq]

i was reading a fic from around 2011 and i was trying to figure out why their version of frazel was actually good and then i realized its because they have frank and hazel interact like they're actually friends with one another. and they do this without altering the new-relationship awkwardness and without forcing percabeth-type banter, but there is very much a rapport because they're close. and it kind of clarified to me the things i do actually like about the pairing but also how much the canon fell short of actually elaborating on those things. because frank and hazel considered each other best friends, thats canon, but there's such a compressed timeline that they don't really have any shared history outside of the camp, and we as readers still don't know enough about the camp to fill in those gaps of what their lives look like day-to-day, or how their friendship/relationship fits into that. and there is initially a substance to the pairing beyond them being awkward and flustered around each other, but not really enough of one because of that compressed timeline. it could be compared to like, jason and piper, which has similar issues of convincing the reader that these two actually know each other very well, but the time they spent together in camp half blood and even the brief wilderness school memories lend relationship context to the reader and lets you fill in the gaps in a way that's not really possible with frazel.