could you hold me (my one and only)

Ricky Bowen has been in love with Gina Porter since he was eighteen years old. Eighteen years old and pining desperately over a girl he thought he'd never have, standing in the wings at summer camp, falling in love with her all over again as she pretends to fall in love with someone else. She'd been in his periphery since he was seventeen, and chasing down the daydream of his first relationship. Nini was wonderful, and he loved her for a time, but as he looks back he realises that his feelings for her pale in comparison to his feelings for Gina. Still, he was grateful to her for teaching him how to love.

Ricky Bowen has been living with Gina Porter since he was twenty one years old, and he wouldn't trade an inch of their tiny New York apartment for anything. Except maybe a bigger apartment. So when he gets a promotion at work at the same time as his girlfriend, it only makes sense to the both of them to look for a bigger space. Despite their parents' claims that what they had then was more than enough, there wasn't much you could do to convince the twenty five and twenty three year old that they didn't need the eleventh floor apartment with a shitty view. ("Gina, you're the prettiest view in the city anyway!")

Which leads us to now: Ricky Bowen, twenty five, in love with Gina Porter, and living with her in an eleventh floor apartment with a shitty view. They've been in their new home barely a week when Gina fishes the old polaroid camera from high school out of an unpacked moving box labelled 'STUFF' in Ricky's messy scrawl.

She turns to face him across the room, clad in a white tank top as he attempts to move the fridge a few inches to the left ("Ricky, it'll look so much better there, I promise you!").

"Ricky, oh my god. Do you remember this? Ash made me bring it everywhere during senior year. 'For my scrapbook', apparently. I never saw it though."

"Huh? Gi, what're you talking about? All I can see is fridge. This thing is heavy, you know."

Gina laughed fondly, padding across the hardwood floor to her vaguely distressed boyfriend, waving the white polaroid camera in front of his face.

"Oh!" his face lit up in recognition, "yeah, I never saw Ash's scrapbook either. It's probably 90% pictures of her and Maddox though, you do realise that? She's probably saving it for their wedding day or something sappy like that."

"You're probably right," Gina replied, giggling.

"For old times sake... I think we should christen this apartment with a few pictures, don't you?" she suggested, returning to the box and rummaging around for the leftover film.

"I thought you'd never ask. Now hand over the camera Porter, I'd like my gorgeous girlfriend to model for some solo shots first."

Gina swatted his arm playfully, feigning reluctance as she handed it over, a light blush on her face. She ran to find Franklin, Ricky groaning in mock annoyance as she balanced the bear on her head (with some difficulty) and beamed at him, motioning for him to take a picture. The white wool of her jumper appeared almost as blindingly bright in the picture as her smile, lighting up her face and causing an involuntary grin to slip onto Ricky's.

Their back and forth carried on for longer than Ricky could comprehend, and before they knew it, the sun had sunk below the New York City skyline, and the horizon was lit by imposing skyscrapers. There was nowhere Ricky wanted to be but that moment. Sitting with Gina on their second apartment's floor, messing around with a polaroid camera neither of them had truly seen since high school, just revelling in the other's presence.

He couldn't help it.

"Marry me."

Gina froze, staring like a bunny in the headlights at her shellshocked boyfriend.