Archive of Our Own

1. Troy and Gabriella

“Pink and orange.”

“Wrong again , Porter!”

“Are you serious?” Gina has just enough energy stored up to prop herself halfway up on her elbows, meeting the smug grin on her boyfriend’s face on the opposite side of his terrible, horrible, wonderful twin-sized dorm room bed, “That’s four times in a row.”

“I’m starting to question all those times I was coerced into believing you when you said you’re always right,” the smug grin opens up wide to toss a victory yellow Starburst into his mouth, no pink or orange in sight.

“I like to keep you on your toes, Bowen.”

“I know that’s like, an expression,” his voice is cutely punctuated by the sticky sweet candy, “But the thought of standing on my feet again right now…”

Gina feels her laugh from her stomach, where her hands lay. It’s god knows what hour of the third night in a row of their first Halloween weekend of college together, and she doesn’t think Ricky gave her, the newcomer here, the proper heads up. Between both their schools, they were at an exorbitant amount of parties, pre-games, post-games, stops at cheap liquor stores because everything seems like fun that many drinks in between games. New costume, rally, do it all again. 

It was, while it was happening, one of the most fun weekends Gina has had here so far. She loves dressing up, she loves being in a place long enough to get to engage in mindless fun for no reason other than it being fun, and she especially loves the handfuls of candy she and Ricky grabbed from the bowl by the door on the way out of leaving their last party very, very early. 

Still a little buzzed, Ricky won’t let her have a piece if she can’t guess the two colors in the Halloween fun-sized packs of Starburst he stashed in his pockets. 

More than still a little buzzed, Gina is failing spectacularly.

She shifts her weight onto one side where she lays, her dress crinkling under it, head by the foot of the bed opposite Ricky’s at the top.

“I feel like we lived three lifetimes in the last three days,” she says, “We were a young, fun college couple on Thursday and now it’s Saturday and we’re—”

“Old people who cannot hang.”

“Oh we should do that, next year,” she sits up again suddenly, even though it is dizzying, “Dress up as an old person couple.”

“ Next year ?” Ricky balks, stopping mid-wrapper removal on Starburst number seven, probably, “Can we make it to tomorrow alive first?”

“You’d look good with silver hair.”

“Flattery doesn’t erase your incorrect guess.”

“I don’t even want your stupid candy anymore, Ricky.”

“Yes, you do.”

Yes, she does. She has such a sweet tooth drunk and he knows it .

“I literally could care less,” she stubbornly keeps up the front, and finally finds the strength to sit up on her knees and look at him across from her properly.

“Sure,” and god, he looks so cute in the glow of the twinkle lights up around the border of the room that falls on her at least once in the middle of the night when she sleeps over because Ricky has yet to master a Command hook, “One last guess?”

Is her mind fuzzy from that shot she did with Maddox before leaving or the way he smiles at her?

“I’m really holding out for a pink, we haven’t had one yet,” she crosses her arms over her white slip dress, her angel wings tickling her back the funny way they droop after she crushed them flopping on the bed immediately upon entering the room, not bothering to take them off.

“Two pinks, final answer?”

She nods cutely. His socked toes nudge at her hip absently.

Drunk Ricky loves a show more than sober Ricky, and makes quite a show of tearing the small package open bit by bit, to reveal the first.

“Pink!”

“I told you, I’m always right,” she says against her staggering 1-7 record for the night, then holds her palms out in front of her, “Gimme.”

Drunk Ricky also is worse at hand-eye coordination than sober Ricky. Tosses the pink Starburst in the air and watches it land… somewhere on the floor.

“Noooo!” Gina whines, watches it go but has not the ittiest bit of a reflex to dodge for it in her state.

“I swore that was gonna work.”

“I hate you,” she pouts her bottom lip out, “I really wanted that.”

“I knew it.”

“Can you get it?”

“You’re so much closer!” He yelps through a laugh, making no motion to move from his stack of pillows.

“You’re the worst boyfriend in the entire world.”

“Oh no, you’re threatening the mug again?” Ricky says flatly, but the corner of his lips curl up in a tempting smile.

“I am, you absolute ass,” she pouts again, “Next time my roommates tell me to dump you, I’m listening.”

“Why do they want you to dump me?” He half sits up.

“None of your business.”

“It’s entirely my business.”

“Wait until they hear you made your beautiful, perfect girlfriend jump off this ten-foot-high death trap bed on risers to get the one piece of candy she asked for on Halloween.”

“Maddox?”

“Are you asking if Maddox is your beautiful, perfect girlfriend?“

“No, does she also want you to dump me?”

“Ashlyn might when she hears you’re dating Maddox,” Gina hums in lieu of a real answer.

“Oh my god, there’s a second pink right here,” Ricky huffs, as if giving in, fed up, and waves around the other piece of candy in the small package he opened, “Never let me have any fun.”

“We have plenty of fun together,” she bites back, but is having a hard time keeping up this pleasantly paced banter when she just wants to jump the distance giddily and get a taste of the sweet candy and his smug lips, “About to sleep off three days worth of it for 12 hours straight.”

“Are you gonna sleep all the way over there? So far away from the worst boyfriend in the world?”

“I’m still in my hating you phase.”

“How much longer?” Ricky looks down at an imaginary watch on his wrist, “Because if it lasts a minute longer, this pink starburst is mine—“

“No, no, no, wait!” Gina squeals, and tries her very, dizziest best, to sit up on her knees and transfer her weight to the other side of the bed, to lay next to Ricky.

But severely misjudges. Lands with a thud directly onto his chest.

“Oof,” Ricky’s voice thrums under her ear, and she giggles.

“Sorry,” she whispers, but she doesn’t mean it much. She sinks into Ricky and would be content to never be anywhere but here.

“No, you’re not,” always reading her mind, this guy.

“Can I have my candy now?”

“No,” he says, but places the small square of candy in front of her smile she’s got propped up on his chest now.

After a silent beat… and another…

“Can you open it?”

“Oh my god!”

“I don’t have a hand free,” she defends herself sheepishly, even as Ricky gets to work opening the candy without missing another second.

“You busy with this one?” He asks, using his free hand to tap on the wrist of hers, which is wrapping curls of his around a finger one by one.

“It’s very busy,” she says, not willing to give it up.

“Sure,” he nods, then holds up the pink Starburst at the ready, “For you, my princess.”

“I know we cycled through about six different costumes this weekend, Ricky, but right now I’m an angel ,” she rolls her eyes towards the wings on her back, because duh . She didn’t know they were that drunk .

He definitely could have chosen from a slew of comebacks for that, since she has decidedly been anything but angelic between threatening to dump him, tracking her hating him time, and putting all of her body weight directly on top of his on his creaky bed.

But instead:

“You’re always my princess though.”

And he’s always insufferably sweet. Never changes, unfortunately. 

“Okay, fine,” she pretends, for the briefest of seconds, to not be irreversibly and unconditionally in love with him and his smug grin, but hates that whole second. She leans forward just a bit, no free hands, like she’s going to take the candy, but instead, places a soft kiss on the corner of his lips.

“Aw, look at that,” he whispers over her face, “She loves me.”

“She loves all the candy you could fit in pockets my cute little dress didn’t have,” she says, finally taking the candy, and revels in his laugh again.

“Very little dress,” Ricky repeats absently, before his eyes go wide and he catches his misstep, starts adorably choking on his words, “I mean, very cute dress, cute little dress , like you said.”

“Mhm,” she tries her best to keep from laughing, three years of Ricky not knowing at all how to react to her dressed up, and it doesn’t get any less heart-attack-inducing. She puts one leg more comfortably between his, finally stops spinning when she’s centered above him, sweetly, and leans forward in his slow motion candy wrapper opening pace, “Very little.”

“I didn’t—” he tries to protest again, before she’s just hovering above him, and with a sharp inhale, kisses him soundly. 

He tastes like three flavors of starburst, and maybe it's a good thing she lost his dumb game so many times because that's all she tastes, mercifully, no frat apartment beer she cannot stand. Her nose nudges his rosy cheek and his smug smile lips are so much better when they slot open for her.  Despite the freezing New York temperatures on their walk home, his hands are on fire everywhere they touch her, first her face in the initial shock of her force, down her neck where she knows he’s itching to kiss (but she hasn’t finished with his lips yet so she keeps him in place), over her shoulders before dancing down the back of her dress, caught between misshapen wings and settling on the hem of her very cute little dress that’s been pushed up a very cute little bit. 

It could be hours here, the length of the entire weekend, and Gina would never tire of this feeling.

It is, unfortunately, probably not more than a handful of minutes.

Ricky’s phone blares to life with the most unpleasant and unfamiliar ringtone. 

“Noooooo,” Gina cries, dropping her forehead onto Ricky’s shoulder, “Turn it off!”

“It’s—”

“Whoever it is, I hate them,” she gives Ricky the littlest bit of leeway to reach for his phone on the desk beside his bed.

“I would say same, but—”

“I just stopped hating you , don’t make me take it back,” Gina says, not thrilled with the space still between them as he focuses on his phone screen, and keeps busy by kissing his neck instead.

“Ah, it’s— hmm— Gi—”

“ Hmm ?” she continues, very content with the breathy way he stumbles over a severe lack of words.

“It’s the SOS,” he makes out after a beat, keeping a hand on her hip as he waves the other towards her with the phone.

“Am I supposed to know what that means?”

“The signal me and Carlos made with each other, for emergencies,” Ricky explains, “Like a bat signal. A friendship pact. The SOS.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” she says, finally relenting, sitting up, her legs on either side of his hips, “What could he possibly need now, at midnight, on Halloween, when we are extremely busy?”

“We told him we were leaving the party because we were tired,” Ricky stares at her knowingly.

“We are ,” Gina fakes the most exaggerated yawn, every nerve cell in her body standing up and awake, “Such a long and grueling weekend and we can’t hang.”

“Mhm, well he thinks we’re free to come help him at the party he ended up at. He needs a buffer,” Ricky starts slowly, and when Gina stares, eyes wide and waiting for a better explanation, he adds, “Boy buffer.”

“He’s asking for a wingman now ?”

“You can’t choose when true love strikes, Gi!” he defends, and she purses her lips, “Okay, when potential college party hookup strikes. Look, I don’t make the rules—“

“The two of you literally made the rules of this SOS thing!”

“He answered my SOS last week so, now I have to.”

“What’d you use an SOS on?” She laughs, fingers dancing over his chest, “I don’t remember any crises in your life in the past seven days.

He bites his lip, contemplating telling her the truth or not. But he’s never been able not to, really.

“Your dance team photoshoot.”

“What does that have to do with—” she starts to ask still laughing, but then recalls how magically , ten minutes after she sent Ricky selfies from the photoshoot dressing room, that Carlos suddenly had a huge exam to study for and wasn’t going to be coming back from the library until after midnight and did Gina maybe want to come over immediately?

This boy.

“You’re not serious!” She screeches, through another bout of laughter.

“Shall I bring up the evidence?” He says, and she can already see him swiping to their text thread, scrolling up for the pictures in question.

She swats his phone away teasingly, “I would thank Carlos, but I’m in my hating him phase now.”

“I’m gonna tell him you said that,” he leans back over towards her, peppering kisses on her cheeks, “When we get to this super awesome party his intro to writing crush is at.”

“We?”

“Oui,” he wiggles his eyebrows as he shows off a French accent only marginally better than her stint as Babette zee feather duster. 

“Why am I in this?”

“Because I love you.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Why would I want to show up to a party without my beautiful, amazing girlfriend?”

“It was beautiful and perfect, actually.”

“Maddox is my beautiful, perfect girlfriend, you’re the beautiful, amazing one, keep up, Gi,” he waves her off, and she finally has a free hand to throw over her mouth to stifle her giggle.

“And Carlos apparently, is the beautiful, important one, because you’re making amazing me get out of this cozy bed that I love for him.”

“You hate this bed.”

“No, I hate you , keep up,” she echoes him.

“Mhm,” he smiles, stupid, stupid boy that she loves, and sits up so they’re facing each other, Ricky’s right leg dangling off the side of the bed and both of Gina’s tucked under her. He reaches forward and holds her face in his hands, “Let’s think of it this way…”

“I’m listening.”

“We wingman him at this party successfully, he won’t be coming back here,” Ricky shrugs, still holding her face close to his, eyes dancing over her features, “We reap the rewards of an SOS without having to use one.”

With a long exaggerated sigh, “Fine, I guess I could put on a brave face and help uphold this vital pillar of yours and Carlos’s friendship.”

“So many big words, Gigi.”

“Are you making it to the party?” She laughs at the way his small words blur together in awe of her big ones, then a little less reluctantly than she originally planned, slides off the bed, “Where are we going?”

“Two floors down,” Ricky gestures with his hand down, but stays up on the bed.

“That’s it?” She balks, pleasantly surprised, “Maybe if you had started with that, I wouldn’t have put up as much of a fight.”

“You don’t even need a coat!”

“Hmm, I do need a new costume though.”

“What? Why ?” Ricky leans forward, brows knitted together in confusion, “If we do our job right, we’ll be there 20 minutes tops.”

“I’m not an outfit repeater, Ricky.”

“No one there is gonna know us besides Los! Who cares?”

“I do,” she shrugs.

“I think the white dress is great,” Ricky smiles.

“I know,” she hums, pleased, but is already meandering towards his closet.

“Keep it on, please.”

“It’s stained,” she tucks her chin and pouts cutely at the bright red down the front of her dress that she doesn’t remember the exact origins of.

“You’re a bloody angel.”

“That’s not a thing, Ricky.”

“You could make it a thing, you’re basically an influencer,” he points, “Miss 1 million Tik Tok followers.”

“I’m not—” and she tries so hard not to blush, but she can’t regulate these things the same way she’s mastered when sober, “I’m not doing that. I don’t care how much you like this dress.”

“ Lots ,” she hears him whisper, and turns to fully face the closet so he can’t see her stupid, stupid grin.

“I’m stealing something—”

“Shocker there.”

“Should we re-enter hating you time?” She says, pulling open the rickety dorm-provided closet door, swiping through his mismatched hangers for something she could pull off.

“Ignoring that,” she hears him say, “If you change that means I also have to change. And I really don’t want to.”

“Who said you have to change?”

“It doesn’t make sense to be half a couples costume on my own.”

“To be fair, did it make that much sense to begin with?” She chances one cheeky glance over a shoulder to smile at his scowl, and his adorable homemade ‘deviled egg’ costume. Because no one in the history of forever has misread a pitch for a “devil and angel” couples costume as poorly as Ricky Bowen did. His yellow construction paper yolk taped to the white t-shirt over his abdomen is crumpled from both the night in general and Gina’s crushing weight, and he sheepishly readjusts the devil horn headband over his mess of curls. 

“I got lots of compliments,” he defends again.

“Sure you— is this my dress?” Gina cuts herself off mid-sentence when her sweep through the hangers reveals one of her floral sundresses in between the endless array of retired skate rat hoodies. 

“Yeah,” she turns to see Ricky shrug.

“I’ve been looking for this for weeks !” 

“You left it here,” another dumb shrug. He’s so cute she could die.

“And you hung it up in your closet?”

“Did you want me to leave it where I found it? Tossed on the floor?” His laughter bounces around the space in the dim room, and Gina lets him ramble behind her as she looks again at the closet. 

Her brain may be day three bender fuzzy, but one thing cuts through the static clearer than ever.

How wonderful a feeling it is to see her clothes hung up next to Ricky’s. 

You never think about this stuff, or maybe you do, but after years of impermanence, isn’t it crazy, Gina wonders, to know this could be her future? 

It surely isn’t something you wax poetic about after three red solo cups full of a terrible mixer and sweaty dancing to old pop music, but that’s the thing about Ricky. Loving him always finds its way to the top.

She pulls it off the hanger before she starts to weep at the thought of one day getting her own drawer of stuff at his place. (Very far off. She doesn’t even have a toothbrush yet. But it’s nice to dream!)

“I know you’re a fan of the white, but I think I should wear this instead,” Gina turns to face Ricky again, who is still lazily lounging on his side of the bed, “It’s reddish-pink. I can take your devil headband.”

“Gina, a devil is the last thing you’d convince anyone of in that dress.”

“He’s full of compliments tonight.”

“I’m serious!” He boasts, hand to his heart, “Maybe I’m biased, but to me that’s like, your Gabriella dress.”

Gina shakes the hanger, watches the small ruffle on the hem of the simple floral dress bounce, “Oh, you sap.”

“C’mon, that looks just like that dress you wore back then and you know it!”

Gina hums not because he’s right (which he is), but because the memory is so fond she feels warm all over. 

“ It’s like catching lightning the chances of finding …” Ricky sings terribly, all off key in his drunken state, into his makeshift microphone (his devil costume pitchfork)

“There’s truly no one like you, Ricky,” she says in lieu of finishing his lyrical phrase, grabs her favorite white hoodie of his from the closet and tosses it in his direction, “Here, Wildcat.”

“What’s this?”

“If you don’t wanna go as Gabriella and her deviled egg, then you can be Troy.”

“No one’s gonna know I’m Troy just in my East High hoodie!” He yells, offended that his costume won’t be believable, after just spending a good while convincing her they didn’t need to change costumes. 

“Carry around a basketball, speak only in Bet On It lyrics, I don’t know,” she tries to supply him options, and she works on getting her cute little white dress off, “If you want my honest opinion—”

“Always.”

“I don’t really care what anyone thinks you look like there,” she narrows her eyes at him in a tightlipped smile once the floral Gabriella-esque dress is over her head, “ I like the way you look in the hoodie.”

“I’m never gonna believe you hate me again.”

“Fantastic,” she hums over his lips, having crossed the room to meet her with sheer inhuman speed, keeping his arms wrapped around her waist annoyingly (incredibly) the whole time she tries to adjust her dress and her hair before they can leave to deliver Carlos to his true love.

Gina thinks they’d have gotten to him quicker if Ricky didn’t stop to hang her white dress up where the floral one just was. Not because it takes him particularly long to do so, but because Gina feels like she has to kiss him at least seven times after she watches him do it because that floating feeling in her chest comes back with a vengeance. 

Can he save his swooping romantics (he’s literally done nothing more than a simple domestic task) for a more appropriate time for her to have life-altering epiphanies?

Luckily any time they lost in the five minutes it takes them to walk from his bed to door to leave because it’s hard to multitask that kind of thing when you’re kissing the whole time, is made up in the fact that the party Carlos has moved to is in fact, only two floors below them. A small thing in a suite, names Gina doesn’t recognize but Ricky knows as all very important characters in Carlos’s life. She follows him into the crowded dorm, party still in full swing, arm wrapped around his cozy white hoodie. 

“Okay, how should we do this?”

“Find Carlos?” Ricky posits, “Or do we skip straight to the wingman part?”

“Maybe it would help if we knew what guy we were supposed to be setting him up with,” Gina nods.

“Gina, thank god you came!” The man of the hour himself suddenly rounds the corner, excitedly grabbing a hold of Gina’s arm, “I was scared of what would happen if I got only Ricky.”

“Wow!”

“Of course, Los. I was ready to come as soon as I heard,” Gina squeezes his hand back, her voice alight with her teasing dramatics.

“Kiss ass!” Ricky yelps.

“Ricky’s what held us up, otherwise we would have been here sooner,” she continues the white lie, shaking her head, “Couldn’t decide on a costume.”

“And this is the result?” Carlos squints, “That’s just Ricky.”

“We’re Troy and Gabriella, dude!”

Carlos nods him up and down, and Gina giggles while Ricky pales, annoyed at the unfortunate turn in the narrative.

“C’mon, show me this guy,” Gina smiles brightly, but Carlos pales before they can get anywhere.

“Abort mission, he’s walking over right now,” Carlos turns his back towards the center of the room, trying to hide against Gina before actually currying several feet from them. And lo and behold, a guy (very good looking guy, might she add, great choice, Los!) is weaving his way through the masses towards the trio of them.

“So sorry if this is weird, my friend told me not to bother you by asking, but I gotta know,” the guy leans in conspiratorially towards Ricky, of all people, then asks, “Are you the guy from that theater kid documentary?”

Oh no.

Gina feels her fists tense at her sides, attack form at the ready, Carlos’s head snaps around with comical speed, but Ricky answers the guy softly before they can do anything else.

“Yeah, uh, yes?” he scratches the back of his neck nervously. No matter how far away they’ve gotten from that mess, you never really learn the right ways to approach this stuff. Is now a good time for her to swoop in, or—

“Such a good costume!” He yells, clapping Ricky on the shoulder, who reels back in shock, “Seriously dude, best one here. You look just like him!”

Gina covers her dropped jaw with a hand.

“Oh its—”

“Did you know he apparently goes here?” The guy continues excitedly, but goes on before Ricky, eyes still bulging wide, can answer, “I had no idea, which is why my roommate made me watch with him. I was reluctant at first, but I got hooked. Dude is a legend .”

Ricky finally reboots, features coming back to life, and he huffs out a laugh, “Would you mind telling her you think that?” It seems he’s caught sight of Gina, and points in her direction.

“No way!” Their new friend beams when he sees Gina in a dress Gina actually thinks she might have worn in the documentary, aiding this bit, “Where the hell did you guys come up with this idea? Or find such good costumes for it?”

“Big fans,” Ricky nods.

“Mhm, don’t get us started !” Gina replies cheekily, and the guy eats it up.

“You even sound like her!”

“You have no idea,” Gina giggles, “We’re actually such big fans that--” she clears her throat, and starts upping the dramatics, “Uh sorry, this is kinda embarrassing.”

The guy’s brows scrunch, confused, waiting for her to go on.

“You know Carlos? From the show?” Gina echoes his earlier stance, and leans in, then points to where Carlos had jumped, a few feet away, “He’s here.”

“Holy shit,” he gasps adorably, smiling when he sees him, “Hands down my favorite. No offense, I know you’re a Ricky guy.”

“None taken,” Ricky hums.

“My roommate’s been making fun of my crush on him for weeks, I cannot believe he’s here !”

She can practically hear Carlos’s ears ringing.

“We were hoping to get a picture, would you mind—”

“Of course, oh my god,” mystery party crush immediately moves, and motions for Gina to hand him her phone for the picture, which she does, happily.

Her and Ricky move quickly to either side of Carlos, to keep up the ruse. When Carlos has got an arm around either one of them, he whispers through a tight smile, “I love you. So much.”

Gina laughs and leans into his side much more comfortably than a fan should on their first meeting.

“Huge fan, thank you so much!” Ricky really amps up the dramatics, as per usual, just in time to push Carlos into the direction of his crush, who is physically handing Gina back his phone but is mentally, it seems, somewhere else, eyes locked on Carlos’s and already deep in conversation.

Gina crosses her arms over her chest, beaming with pride at their lucky success.

“Mission accomplished,” Ricky whispers in her ear smug.

“Not a terrible wingman after all, I guess,” she whispers back, leaning into his side when he wraps an arm around her shoulder, kisses the top of her head, “Not a terrible costume either, Ricky from the theater kid documentary.”

“Told you I wasn’t a convincing Troy Bolton.”

“Always my Troy Bolton though.”

“Might have to cut you off candy because that was, dare I say, sweet ?” Ricky’s laughter tickles her skin, “And I thought you hated me.”

“Now where’d you hear a rumor like that?” She says, twisting to face him, but keeping his arms around her, “Because I heard a rumor Ricky from the theater kid documentary got back together with his judgy ex Gina.”

“Really?”

“Been madly in love for years,” she shrugs, “So I hear.”

“Interesting,” Ricky bites his lip attractively, looks down at her under his long lashes, settles his warm hands on her waist once again, “Is she at this party too?”

“Not for much longer,” Gina eases up on her toes a bit, “I heard another rumor her and her boyfriend have an empty twin bed and tons of stolen starburst candies to get back to.”

“You are so—” Ricky shakes his head, laughter more intoxicating than anything Gina had tasted the last three days, as he starts backing them up towards the door to leave their last party.

“I love you,” she gives in and says, just before kissing him under the harsh hallway lights.

“And I love you more.”

“More than pink Starbursts.”

Her floral Gabriella dress ends up back on the floor where it started, swapped for the pink starburst neither of them made a move to get from where it had fallen before, and Gina swears, she will never love anyone like this more in her entire life. Even if every Halloween fun-sized packet for the rest of forever had only pinks. 

The rumors are true, she would absolutely never get over this boy.

And as she kisses him once, twice, a couple dozen times with her head spinning and her heart full, she thinks, thank god she’s always right. 

2. Birds

“Whatcha doing?”

“The same thing I was doing the last three times you asked,” Gina feels the gentle press of her boyfriend’s chin on her shoulder but keeps her eyes locked on the laptop screen she has perched on her knees, “ Work .”

“It’s fall break.”

“I know.”

“Do you know what the word break means?”

“I do,” Gina says, curtly, “Want me to demonstrate my knowledge by using it in a sentence?”

“Gi—”

“I will break your nose if you keep being purposefully annoying while I’m busy,” she sacrifices one hand from her keyboard to make a fist and mimic the motion of punching Ricky square in the nose he’s been trying to nuzzle affectionately into her side the whole 30 minutes now they’ve been sitting in their airport terminal. 

Gina doesn’t remember whose bright idea it was last month when noticing Jet’s birthday lined up so nicely with their fall break, a week before Halloween, and decided that was the perfect excuse to book a spontaneous and surprise trip to LA for the weekend.

(It was, entirely, hers and Ricky’s. But she’s letting him take the fall for it now.)

And the timing could not have worked out more perfectly in almost every aspect: all the dates, every friend of theirs was available at the same time for the first time in years, she got every piece for her costume in record timing that never happens with online ordering to her dorm room. But while she checked those items off her to-do list, her workload felt like it was multiplying. 

Gina got the hang of college pretty quickly her freshman year. So she had no idea why sophomore fall semester was kicking her ass. 

She’d never let anyone know, in any way, but she felt like she was constantly drowning in assignments, rehearsals, her peers were already thinking about careers and what they needed to do now to get those careers and Gina literally just conditioned herself to stop doing that and why the fuck did dance majors have to take science and the dining hall food was so inedible and maybe she should get a job to pay for ridiculous city prices of living but in what spare time and she hasn’t seen the inside of Ricky’s dorm room in 2 weeks but has become so familiar with the library and she has not slept, like really slept, probably since the semester started. 

Instead of saying anything about it, she just smiles and clicks away at her keyboard while they wait for their boarding time and you’d just never know. 

(Ricky knows everything about her, though.)

“Can I help?”

“Help me break your nose?” she answers his earnest question cheekily, deflecting from the obvious problem eating away at her.

“Mhm, is this a good position for you?” He smiles back though, just as cheekily, tilting his head side to side to give her theist view of his nose, “Or is this better?”

He hops up, hands on the armrest on either side of her as he bends to her eye level, swiftly shutting her laptop when she’s too busy biting back a laugh.

“Or do you have that mean right hook? Maybe this is the better side for you,” he says, dropping into the seat now on the other side of her, and she stops trying to hide how inexplicably happy he makes her in all ways, against all competing forces. 

“Are you done?” She rolls her eyes, one hand settling on his knee to betray her faux annoyance at his bit.

“Are you ?” His eyes flit down to the laptop, which she has practically on autopilot reopened.

“I need to finish this paper. It’s due the Tuesday we get back from break and this is the first moment I haven’t had something else lingering and due before it but we’re going to be busy again until we land on Monday night 6 hours before it needs to be turned in so…”

“I think I followed that,” Ricky ponders, more out of breath at hearing her run-on sentence than she probably was after saying it, “What’s it about? Can I help?”

“Nah, I’m almost done,” she nods, scrolls to the top of the page, and lets Ricky lean in to see…

An almost completely blank white page, with nothing more than her name, Gina Porter, the title ‘Animal Paper’, and a Pulitzer Prize winning opening line: “This is the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever had to do in my entire life.” The rest of the page is completely blank, despite having had the document open since the moment they passed through security.

“Yeah, all you need is one more sentence to tie it all up,” Ricky says, “May I suggest: ‘And I really have done a lot of stupid things, so you can trust me on this.’”

“It’s not funny, Ricky.”

“It’s actually scientific fact that you’re a great judge of stupid things, been dating me for three whole years .”

“I don’t think you fit the guidelines,” she pulls the window with the syllabus open and towards the center of the screen, instructions for the midterm paper from hell.

“Give me like, the tiniest bit more than ‘animal paper’ to work with, and then I can totally help you bang this thing out before we land in LA.”

“There is nothing more, we literally just have to pick an species, and write a paper on it,” Gina gestures dumbly at the screen, her frustration growing by the minute. Stupidest fucking thing. 

“Really?”

“I’m in science class for dummies, Ricky,” she huffs, pushing her laptop to the furthest point of where it rests on her knees, like she physically needs the space away from it, “Science requirement class for non-science majors. It’s so fucking—”

“Stupid, yes,” he nods, “Let me help.”

“You can’t, I haven’t even picked an animal yet,” she slumps further into her seat.

“Then let's pick,” he does the opposite, leans forward, towards her, with unprecedented excitement for a filler class assignment, “Any animal?”

“Literally anything in the world as long as it is real and existed at one point.”

“Dogs,” Ricky nods, definitively.

“It was also my first thought but Jess, you know my friend Jess from—“

“Ballet, I do pay attention.”

“She already wrote the whole thing and turned it in because she’s a robot who doesn’t need sleep to function or joints for like, behind her ear battements,” her words come out in a hot sigh, because Jess was infuriatingly amazing at everything and she loved her dearly but, “She also had time, I guess, to become a classically trained novelist or something. And her paper is already going to be so much better than mine, but made glaringly more obvious if it's on the same subject.”

“There are so many other options, Gi,” he nods lightly, “And I think you’re a great writer.”

“You can’t just say that—”

“You helped me rhyme all those songs I was writing back in high school.”

“This isn’t poetry class, Ricky,” she shakes her head, “My professor’s not accepting haikus in place of a five page paper.”

“Five pages is easy, let me help, Porter,” he begs again, leaning in even closer, nose to her cheek sweetly, “Please.”

“You know what would help?” She hums, a hand on the side of his chin, “A coffee. I need to stay awake the whole flight to get this done.”

Ricky doesn’t look pleased with being delegated to this task, not because he doesn’t want to buy her a drink, but because she is, on all accounts, definitely trying to brush him off. It's not personal. She’s at her wits end.

But he gives her a little half smile, and places a hand over the ones she still has pressed to his chin, despite her focus already drawn back to her paper, “The usual?”

“I love you,” she hums him off, trying to turn her face to kiss the side of his hand and totally missing. He makes up for it by kissing the top of her head while he stands instead, and passes by Maddox and Carlos, who are returning to their gate waiting seats with snacks of their own in hand. Gina only subconsciously registers Maddox asking Ricky what's wrong, but doesn’t hear an answer before he’s gone.

By the time they’re calling their flight to start boarding, all Gina has managed is a weak google search, three tabs open to ‘animals’, ‘animals to write a paper on’, and ‘dropping out of college’. 

She shuts the laptop and puts it away, standing up and scanning the busy terminal for Ricky.

“Where’d you send him?” Maddox says, zipping up her own bag.

“Coffee,” Gina answers, through an ironically timed yawn.

“Oh so you and loverboy will be awake the entire flight?” Carlos says, before turning to Maddox “On second thought, Maddox, we should settle this fairly.”

“I thought we already decided—”

“Settle what?” Gina’s interest is piqued enough for the first time all day to show any emotion other than animal paper existential dread.

“Seating arrangement. Three in a row means one of us is with you and Ricky…”

“The other is alone across the aisle,” Carlos finished with a defiant shrug, “I see only one fair way to do this.”

“Agreed,” Maddox nods, before holding one hand out and placing another in a fist on top of it, “Ready whenever you are, Rodriguez.”

Gina laughs brightly when her friends launch into the most serious three rounds of rock, paper, scissors she has ever seen. If the silly scene in front of her weren’t already making her feel better, her boyfriend’s reappearance triples her growing good mood instantly.

“Sorry, sorry,” he runs up to her, out of breath panting, though she doesn’t know how far he went for this coffee, considering there is no drink in his hands, “Line at Starbucks was crazy long.”

“It’s okay,” she shakes her head, not wanting him to feel too bad about it even if she was worried about how she’d stay awake now, “You just missed the battle of the century.”

“Carlos lost,” Maddox doesn’t waste a moment before boasting her triumph, smiling.

“Dude, we went over strategies all last night!” Ricky yelps, patting Carlos on the shoulder with his condolences, and Gina finds herself smiling once again, picturing Ricky researching all the best ways to win rock, paper, scissors so he got to sit with Carlos on the flight. 

Their two friends make their way towards the gate to check in and board, Ricky and Gina just a step behind them, carry-on suitcases in tow.

“I really am sorry about the coffee,” Ricky leans down towards her, “I would have never made it back in time.”

“It’s really okay, Ricky,” she says, giving one of his hands a squeeze before going back to pushing her suitcase, “Maddox took the class last year, and now that she’s sitting with us, maybe she can lend some expertise.”

“Oh cool, so Maddox can help, but not me?” he nods, “I get it.”

“You don’t even do your own homework, and you want to do mine?”

“Of course.”

“Idiot,” she says, with absolutely no conviction whatsoever, “I like keeping you separate from terrible things in my life.”

He likes this answer better than the coffee run.

“You’re a very good thing,” she nods, pulling her boarding pass up on her phone absently, a few steps away from the check in counter, “And I do everything in my power to keep you that way.”

“Speaking of good things,” he segues oddly, reaching for something he shoved in his large sweatshirt pocket, before extending it to her, “Ta da!”

Gina’s smile falters and replaces itself with shock. If they weren’t in an extremely public setting right now, she’d tackle him to the floor in kisses. He always knows .

She takes the snack-sized bag of Cheerios, ones she only ever saw in airports, stores only ever had boxes, and is so torn between squealing and crying.

He always did stupid stuff like this. Even when she wasn’t earning her mug official greatest girlfriend title and was instead brushing him and his kind gestures off in her sour mood. He remembered this odd, obscure fact, and went out of his way to get it for her. 

“Where the hell did you find these? My mom used to—”

“Buy them for you before every flight when you moved,” Ricky finishes for her, watching her crinkle the yellow bag in her hands, still a little disbelieving, “I’m not actually sure what the Starbucks line looked like. Saw these hanging on a hook on a little convenience cart, and didn’t go a step further.”

“I don’t want every flight attendant to hate us before we even find our seats,” Gina starts, smiling politely at the gate agent who takes her phone to scan, “But as soon as Carlos gets his beauty sleep mask on, and Maddox has her eyes glued on her horror movie, I’m gonna kiss you. Several times.”

Her pink suitcase is hoisted above them into the overhead compartment before she slides into the window seat, her bag with her school work already in her lap so she can eat her cheerios and kiss Ricky between sentences and pester Maddie into maybe sending her her own animal paper for reference. 

Only, Ricky slides into the middle seat next to her, and Carlos takes the aisle seat.

Ricky looks between his roommate and Maddox, happily getting comfortable in her seat opposite them, and brows furrowed, he asks, “Los, I thought you lost ?”

“I did,” he snaps back, and while Ricky stays confused, Gina hides her giggle behind a hand.

“What does he mean—” Ricky turns back to face her, so adorably perplexed she pats his knee reassuringly, “You didn’t wanna sit with us?”

“Are you or are you not about to wax poetic about the cereal you bought her for the first third of this flight?” Carlos counters, and Gina just laughs more, “You’re in love, I’m painfully single. Six hours in close proximity. It's not anyone’s ideal scenario.”

The boys bicker good naturally about the new news to Ricky until they’re zooming down the runway, up in the air, and the lights in the cabin are dimmed besides Gina’s bright laptop, the blank white page glaring at her. 

“I love you,” Ricky says, snapping the laptop shut and moving the bag of cereal into its place before Gina can protest, the cool dark and quiet of the plane restored with the bright light of her screen gone, “Eat your cereal.”

“Ricky—”

“Fuels the brain, makes for good writers,” he just pushes the bag closer, goading her on, “ Please .”

“I can’t, I need to—” she starts, looking up so tears don’t well in her eyes, “This semester has been really hard, Ricky.”

“I know,” he says gently.

“How?” She says, an empty laugh, “Every time you ask me about school I tell you it's going great.”

“Gi, I know your favorite cereal is this specific sized bag of Cheerios from a specific gate at an airport you specifically frequented as a child,” Ricky explains, “I think I could tell something was up.”

“And you’re not mad?” She starts, acutely aware of how loud it sounds even at a whisper, in the quiet of their nighttime flight, “That I didn’t say anything to you?”

“If you wanted to you would have,” he shrugs, like it's the simplest thing in the world, “It's not about me at all, really.”

“You think I shouldn’t write it?” Gina asks, fingers drumming on her closed laptop anxiously.

“ I think we have six hours on this plane. You can spare five minutes to eat your Cheerios and give that pretty little head of yours a break,” he puts his hand on the side of her head and pulls it into him, settles her into the crook of his neck. 

“College Ricky is so weird,” she hums, getting more comfortable and cozy by the second in his space, “He’s so smart.”

“Thank you?”

“Planned this whole little trip to surprise his best friend, made sure everyone had the right costumes for his party, found me Cheerios in a bag, knows when I’m being crazy.”

“You’re not crazy.”

“Permission to say something cheesy?”

“Always.”

“Crazy about you.”

“That was so high school Ricky of you, Gina.”

“Pretty sure you said that to me last week.”

Knowing he’s defenseless, college Ricky smart now but just as sappy as he’s always been, he silently picks out a Cheerio and tosses it into his mouth, an argument already on the tip of his tongue on why they should invest in Lucky Charms more because Cheerios are so boring but if that’s what Gina likes it basically the boring pieces from Lucky Charms but at least that was Ricky could pick out all the marshmallows for himself.

She’s asleep before she knows how to answer, and is so sure, she has never slept so soundly in her entire life. She only wakes up when there are minutes to spare before they land, creases on her cheek from the wrinkle of Ricky’s shirt on his shoulder where she dozed the entire blissful 6 hours, more rested than she’d been all semester. 

He is so perfect for her, without ever even realizing it. 

She sees her laptop in his lap, and despite being a little confused about it, she wasn’t going to ask.

“Didn’t want it to fall out of your lap,” Ricky supplies an answer anyway, before reaching down for her bag at her feet to put it away for her, before they land and make their way off the plane.

She’s always wondered how Ricky makes her feel better just by being around. She guesses maybe it's something they put in the water for those born and raised Salt Lakers, because the sight of two more of her Utah home friends at the arrivals gate does just about the same thing for her spirits.

To no one’s surprise, Ashlyn drops her totally unnecessary and elaborately decorated welcome sign with their names scribbled so tiny in an attempt to fit them all in on one line the second she sees Maddox at the top of the escalator.

“You’re here!”

There are squeals of excitement and running and hugs and Gina’s anxious worry has dissolved right into laughter when she gets her arms around Kourtney, the four girls reunited for the first time in what feels like lifetimes. 

“Your faces look so amazing in real life,” Kourtney giggles after months of long FaceTime calls, holding Gina’s face close to hers before reaching out for Maddox’s in their misshapen group hug.

“How are you? How’s New York? How are the rats? How is pizza?” Ashlyn rambles a million and seven totally unimportant questions, trying to get Gina into a bear hug of her own now that she’s sufficiently squeezed the life out of her girlfriend, “How’s the weather? How’s life?”

“I missed you so much,” is all Gina has it in her to answer, those tears she fought off while boarding the plane here making their grand reentrance. She doesn’t feel too bad about them coming though, looking at her and her best friends all reunited, “So, so, so, so, so, so much.”

“Shit, only six so’s? I swore it was seven when you came last year,” Kourtney teases, and they collapse into another group hug.

“No, thanks so much you guys, we totally got it,” Ricky says, him and Carlos finally making it to the rest of them, having to maneuver their way down the escalator and to their meeting point carrying their own bags and the ones Maddox and Gina excitedly threw to the wind when they went running for the girls. (Carlos looks exhausted but he has picked up Maddox’s backpack and that’s it. Ricky, bless his heart, has somehow grown octopus arms and has three carry-on suitcases dragging behind him.)

“Oh, he feels left out,” Maddox teases him, looking so comfortable in Ashlyn’s arms after over a month apart that she really doesn’t seem to care what wrath her sarcasm could inflict with the boy.

“Shut up.”

“Let’s restart!” Ashlyn claps, and tries to open her arms for a group hug part two, putting on her best actress voice, “Oh my god, you’re all here!”

“Save it, we don’t need you,” Carlos deflects, hugs Ricky on his own.

“You considered sitting next to me on a flight a loss , Carlos!”

“I just hate to see the happy couple fighting,” Kourtney teases, before pulling herself away from Gina’s embrace to envelop Ricky instead, “I’m stealing him away.”

Ricky drags his suitcase behind him, one arm looped through Kourtney’s while they catch up amiably since seeing each other last, Carlos’s pout replaced with laughter when he gets between Ashlyn and Maddox, and she has no idea what everyone’s talking about as they make their way towards the exit, but none of it matters.

She may never understand the science of things, even for dummies, but she’s got a perfect handle on this, on how everything is right when the pieces of home fall into place for a little bit. 

(She thinks it might be more magic than science, but she’d like to beat Jess on that paper, so she’ll try to stick to facts.)

It's much later that night by the time they’re all in Kourtney’s apartment, getting ready to get their costumes checked by Ricky, who was taking his job organizing this group costume look for Jet’s surprise Halloween birthday party so, very seriously.

You’d never guess how serious he was about it if you saw what he was standing in front of them all in.

“We look terrible.”

“We look amazing!” Ricky cheers, so excitedly, going up and down the lineup of his friends in full costume for the final check before Jet gets here.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have picked such a broad theme,” Ashlyn says, giggling at Maddox beside her, who inches a step away every time she sneezes from her girlfriend’s overabundance of feathers. 

“Maybe we shouldn’t have put Ricky in charge of the theme,” Carlos says, looking down the line of costumes that truly, make no sense together, before looking back at his roommate who is not seeing the issue, “You said anything to do with birds!”

“Yes,” Ricky nods, “And you all delivered.”

“Not a single person in the world is going to know that's what we are,” Maddox has to agree with Carlos, in light of discovering she’s allergic to Ashlyn’s yellow feathers and that she looks so strange standing next to with a gruesome, bloody equivalent.

“I think it has character,” Gina tries to be supportive, because she speaks to Ricky fluently, and is content with her peacock feather skirt.

“I wouldn’t have been a character if I knew we were supposed to be literal birds!”

Ricky had, indeed, orchestrated for everyone to be birds, insisting how much Jet loves them, but maybe his communication of that fact was off, seeing as they’re standing here with a peacock, Big Bird, and the title character from Lady Bird .

“There’s a Spirit Halloween down the block if we wanna make a last ditch effort at something better,” Ashlyn offers, even though she doesn’t look too displeased with the way things came together either. It is, if you squint the right way, kind of adorable.

“No, no, no, you guys, listen to me! Jet loves birds!” Ricky goes back to the same insisting he had done over text last month, “He’s going to love this.”

“I mean…” Kourtney tries to intercept, with probably more up to date information on Jet’s hobbies than Ricky, but she thinks better of it, “It’s not that bad. It’s obvious I’m a bird… and Maddox is what happens if you piss me off!” 

“No one has seen The Birds? Alfred Hitchcock?” Maddox waves around her bloody bird prop with growing annoyance, “Classic scary movie?”

“Wait, how did the bird get into the shower?” 

“That’s Psycho.”

“I’m talking about The Birds.”

“Don’t call Ricky’s bird idea psycho! He tried really hard!”

“Oh my god.”

“Thank you, Ashlyn,” Ricky says, adjusting the hem of the oversized Angry Bird costume (literally an overpriced sack with a cartoon face) that he had gotten them stopped at security in the airport for far too long, “You’re all birds in some capacity or another. I say it's a success and so will Jet!”

“What am I saying?”

The bickering friend group turns around at the sound of Jet’s voice, hand on the open door to Kourtney’s apartment.

“Surprise!”

“Happy birthday Jet!”

“He’s 21!”

“Let’s do shots!”

“Slow down, slow down, where the hell did you guys come from?” Jet’s normal stone cold exterior melts when everyone swarms him for hellos and happy birthdays. Though their costume coordination may have been a bust, Gina is impressed that he really does look quite surprised, so they pulled one part of this off, at least, “What is going on?”

“Did you think we were missing your birthday dude?” Ricky hugs his best friend so tight, you cannot see either of them, really, between that hideous Angry Bird costume. 

“We haven’t had Halloween all together in years and, while we’re technically still a week away, Ricky had one really good idea for the only time ever and found the New York side a really cheap flight,” Maddox says smiling.

“Dude, if you ever want to switch coasts with your sister, I mean ever, just say the word,” Ricky says, while Maddox grabs her brother in a laughing hug and Carlos and Ricky almost get into their third domestic argument of the day when he thinks that’s Ricky trying to replace him with a new roommate. 

“You guys this is,” Jet nods, looking around at all of them, “Cool. Very cool.”

“That was the most touching thing he’s ever said.”

“I do not think I have a costume that uh,” Jet clears his throat, “Fits in with whatever we’ve got going on here.”

“And that, my friend, is where you are wrong,” Ricky’s excitement returns in his voice, “Because I thought of everything!”

He hands Jet a poorly wrapped birthday gift, which fell victim to being packed between the angry bird costume in his carry-on, and opens it to reveal…

“Binoculars!” Jet starts tentatively, a weak smile attempting a convincing tone, “Just what I always wanted!”

“You’re the bird watcher! We’re the birds!” Ricky finally explains his costume pitch, and Jet tries to take it all in without laughing. Gina’s giggles are about to be right behind him. 

“You love birds, apparently,” Ashlyn smiles in her Big Bird costume, next to Maddox’s horror movie look, and Gina’s cute turquoise peacock look.

“And we don’t know what birds are , apparently,” Carlos crosses his arms over his blue Lady Bird dress.

“Actually, you’re the only one that’s like, really off, Los.”

“Maddox isn’t a bird!”

In response, she tosses her bloody bird prop at him and he screams.

Ricky tries to get Jet into his beige cargo birdwatching vest he bought him excitedly, because all experienced bird watchers are very in tune with the angry bird species, “Dude, you love birds.”

“I hate to break it to you, but I really do not.”

“You mean to tell me I’m allergic to my girlfriend for the night for no reason?” Maddox punctuates with another adorable sneeze.

“But you read that bird watching book every single night for two weeks straight at camp! You know so many facts about birds!” Ricky explains fervently, his arms swinging wildly trying to defend his costume choice, flabbergasted that he could have gotten this thing wrong (Gina is so unbelievably endeared it's insane).

“Ricky, I don’t know how to say this any more politely than I’m about to, but I truly just could not listen to you talk about Gina anymore.”

The laughter it sends around the group (from all except Ricky) springs and bounces around the walls infectiously.

“Reading anything was better than listening to you,” Jet continues, amidst laughter, “And I retained a surprising amount of what I read trying to block out the sound of your despair.”

“But you still have it!”

“And you still talk about Gina, do you not?”

“Happy birthday, Jet,” Gina giggles, pulling the birthday boy into the side for a hug, and whispering, “I’m so sorry, but also not at all.”

Ricky is beside himself for a while, and Ashlyn is trying to console him through tearful laughter of her own, Maddox smudging her red blood makeup on him, “Well, whatever dude, Kourtney invited all your friends from college to come over for the party in a few, and you can be the one to explain to them how you duped me into pulling off the greatest group costume of all time over a lie .”

“They made you even more dramatic in that music teacher school, huh?” Jet laughs.

“Go easy on him, he was so excited,” Kourtney says, sliding up next to Jet and Gina, showing off her absolutely stunning Flamingo ensemble, head to toe in show-stopping pink, “I actually had fun with the idea!”

“That’s because you make everything look good, Kourt,” Gina laughs.

“No yeah, I love you,” Jet says, dazed, eyes flitting up and down over Kourtney’s look, before catching himself. His cheeks go brighter than Kourntey’s dress, brighter than Ricky’s sack, brighter than Maddox’s makeup, when he realizes, and clears his throat to forcefully, “I mean I love it , I love it, the theme !”

“Mhm.”

“I love birds, love them , so much!” Jet says, embarrassed and slipping out from between the girls, and running towards Carlos and Ricky, still yelling cover ups, “Ricky is so right. I love birds and I love all of you because you are dressed as birds. Where are those binoculars, hm?”

Ricky is slightly more appeased with this turn of events and helps Jet complete his birdwatcher costume, while the rest of them finish setting up for Jet’s school friends to arrive and the party to begin.

Gina smiles at Kourt, nudging her shoulder into her friend’s, “I’m getting so tired of waiting for one of you two to do something about that.”

“Alright, Mrs Bowen.”

“You know what? You can’t even phase me with stuff like that anymore,” Gina says to Kourtney’s teasing, both their smiles bright, “Do you wanna hear what he did today?”

“I wasn’t planning on puking before we started doing shots but okay,” Kourtney springs another bout of laughter from her, leaning back on the wall behind them, “Sure, what wonderfully sweet thing did the two of you do to make us all believe in love again today?”

Ignoring that intro, Gina smiles, leaning next to her, “I have this paper due on Tuesday that I hadn’t started yet because I’m having a really, really rough semester. I didn’t say a word to him about it, anyone really, just been, you know, reverting to Gina 1.0, trying to do everything myself.”

“I hate that name, you’re not allowed to use it,” Kourtney nudges her again, “You’re perfect, just Gina.”

“Okay but still,” she flushes, never going to be used to how genuinely loved she feels in her friendships now, “I wasn’t being great to him, like at all.”

“Hard to believe, but continue.”

“I slept uninterrupted for the first time in weeks on his shoulder during the flight here, but that meant no writing. And while I needed that sleep, which he totally knew , I was still thinking about that stupid paper. And since I finished getting dressed earlier than everyone else, I just opened my laptop to look at it, maybe write a sentence or two before the party to ease my worry about it a little.”

Kourtney nods her on.

“He spent the whole flight filling the document full of bird facts.”

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s an animal paper, doesn’t matter,” Gina waves, “What matters is he stayed up the whole flight and basically did all the research I needed to write the paper for my class. He collected every dumb, stupid fact about birds that he either learned from Jet or looked up to make Jet happy this weekend, and used it to help me write my paper so that I would be happy, this weekend.”

“What’d I say?” Kourtney smiles, “We all believe in love whenever the two of you enter a room.”

“I don’t even know if I deserve it, or if it's technically considered cheating, or if these obscure fun facts about birds are what my professor really wanted to read about,” Gina smiles, her eyes on Ricky across the room, taking pictures of Maddox and Jet through bouts of ecstatic laughter, “But he literally texted my friend Jess who is in the class with me to ask for the guidelines so he could make sure he was getting me the right info. He’s met Jess like, six times total.”

“He loves you.”

“ Jess loves him ,” Gina laughs, “Said she saved his name in her phone as Mr Porter, so really, like I said, I don’t even know how far-fetched those jokes are anymore. If you don’t know if it's worth it to make a move with the birdwatcher over there, I can promise you, it 100% is.”

“Do you know what Nini will do to me when I admit I’m in love with a little Ricky after I said nothing but terrible things about actual Ricky for 3 years of high school?”

Gina laughs brightly at that, because Jet really is a little Ricky and Kourt and Ricky are, on all accounts, some of the closest friends in the group now. The pieces of home fit together wherever they are. Magic.

“Alright, guess it's my turn to go steal little Ricky,” Kourt sighs, though she doesn’t sound too upset about it when she pushes herself off the wall and starts towards everyone else, “The other one’s all yours!”

Kourtney and Jet start in on a conversation across the room, and Gina loves how she doesn’t have to quell her smile at all when Ricky spots her through stolen binoculars, and makes a show of pointing to her.

“My god, I found the most gorgeous bird in all of California!”

“Shut up.”

“One of a kind, I’m gonna go down in history books for seeing this one,” he says once they’ve met each other in the middle, her arms instinctively making their way around his waist, binoculars up by his eyes still the only thing keeping them apart. 

“Mhm, can I see you now, please?” She tries to push the binoculars away, get a look at his face up close, and makes the LA sunset jealous with how bright she beams back at him, “Hey.”

“Hi,” he quirks his head to the side, “You doing okay?”

“Better than,” she nods, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Smart college Ricky can’t play dumb, you know.” 

“I know,” he says simply, kissing her nose, “I love you.”

“You love birds.”

“Jet doesn’t.”

“He loves you, everyone here does,” she says, pressing a hand to the side of his face tenderly, “Especially me.”

“Even though I made you dress up as a bird?”

“I think I’m pulling it off,” she says, looking down for just the briefest second at her silly costume.

“You definitely are,” he says, looking her up and down, the swooping sensation his compliments always bring her unable to get any easier to stomach even three years in, before kissing her quickly, “You are so beautiful.”

“Thank you,” she tries to kiss him again but he’s insistent on letting the compliments keep going.

“And talented, and smart,” a kiss to her cheek, “And a brilliant writer,” the other.

“Let's not say anything prematurely.”

“The cutest napper in the world,” this time it's a kiss to her forehead, “With an odd choice in cereals,” another kiss on her lips for good measure.

“And you are…” she kisses the side of his hand, peeking up at him under her long lashes, “An angry bird.”

“An in love angry bird,” he said, before his eyes go wide, “Fuck, why weren’t we love birds ?!”

She does not care how long her friends yell at her to stop, she has to kiss Ricky so long and hard after that one. He is so perfect.

She will not think about her horrible semester for the rest of the weekend. She will be so happy. She will get her whole paper finished on the plane home, with time to spare for a nap on her favorite shoulder in the world. And when her and Jess get matching As on the papers at the end of the week, Jess will insist Ricky join them for their celebratory dinner because she’d prefer to get to know the guy a little before being maid of honor at the wedding. 

But for now, Gina says to hell with it all, and kisses Ricky, so scientifically sure that he is the angry love bird of her life. 

3. Sick

The first sign that something is wrong is when Ricky calls Gina after her class and she answers the phone quietly.

Because he knows Gina loves Halloween. It sounds like she’s working putting that excitement into her voice, unlike when its just there, so Ricky can tell it’s an act. It’s Ricky’s senior year of college and, therefore, his last Halloweekend, and his and Gina’s first party to go to is on Ricky’s campus. They planned on getting ready at Ricky’s place, walking to campus, and heading back to Ricky’s after the party. 

“How far away are you?” He asks her, carefully closing up the pastel eyeshadow palette Kourtney suggested that Gina use, pressing his phone between his ear and shoulder. 

“Just a couple more blocks, I’ll be maybe two minutes,” Gina says, sniffling. He hears her pull the phone away from herself to cough, and Ricky decides right then and there that they’re staying in tonight, Halloween party be damned.

“Okay,” he says anyway, “I’ll see you then, love you.”

“Love you too,” she hangs up and Ricky looks around the room. Their costumes are laid out on the university-issued couch, their windowsill has a portable mirror on it with a now-closed eyeshadow palette next to it. Carlos left an hour ago to meet the boy he’s talking to on his campus for a Halloween party, leaving Ricky to frantically check his location every half hour. If he’s going to succeed at convincing Gina to stay in tonight, he’s going to have to make it look inviting.

He picks up their Mario and Princess Peach costumes, putting them on hangers and shoving them into his closet, bringing out some blankets and pillows from his room. He grabs his red East High hoodie that he knows is Gina’s favorite, throwing it next to the blankets. He gathers up whatever he can grab of the makeup, and he’s setting them on whatever empty surface he can find on his room when Gina knocks on the door.

“Hi,” Gina says breathlessly when Ricky opens the door for her, rushing in and putting her bag down against the wall. She stops when she sees the living area and turns to Ricky, “Where are our costumes?”

“What happened to hi , hello , a kiss in greeting maybe? A how was your day ? Anything?” Ricky teases.

“My class ran over, Ricky–”

“Gina.”

“We have to leave like, now if we want to make it on ti–”

“Gi.”

“I literally ran here because I still don’t know what I’m doing for my makeup–”

“Gina!” Ricky stops her, putting his hands on either side of her (warm and probably fevered) face. She’s had a long week, though she’ll never say it. Her rehearsals have run late almost every night and she had two midterm papers due in the middle of the week. Ricky feels like he’s barely even seen her at all. Both of the nights she’s been over for dinner, she’s gone back to homework immediately and barely said two words to him after they crawled into bed before she falls asleep. Ricky’s sure all of that combined with the fact that New York City is finally feeling the first chills of autumn weather and the bug that seems to be going around every college in the city equate to the fact that Gina’s just sick . Plus, Ricky knows her. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“We’re staying home tonight.”

“What? No, we have your party to go to–”

“The party can wait, Gi, you’re sick.”

“No, I’m not,” and Ricky has to hold back a laugh because her sniffles betray her to turn into a sneeze almost right away.

He only has to look at her for about thirty seconds before she scoffs and flops back onto the couch, a pout on her face and her hair smushed up against a pillow.

“I feel like shit,” she says, her voice slightly muffled.

“I know.”

“My professors and instructors hate me.”

“I don’t think anyone could ever hate you, Gigi.”

“Tell that to the one person on Twitter that wouldn’t leave me alone after the documentary came out.”

“Oh, I will. I have some other words for that person, too,” Ricky says, sitting down next to Gina. “What do you want to do?”

“Well,” she starts, sitting up and pushing the hair out of her face. “I’ve been banished from my apartment because Ashlyn’s visiting next week and Maddox said she would not, under any circumstances, risk getting sick to prevent Ashlyn’s arrival. She said I could either leave and not come back until I wasn’t sick anymore or quarantine in my room, and seeing as I’ve already left…”

“So you’ll stay here,” Ricky says. He pulls them back to lie down on the couch, wrapping his arms around a shivering Gina and kissing her forehead. 

“No kissing,” Gina protests, weakly pushing his face away with a hand. “I’ll get you sick.”

“I don’t care,” Ricky says, pressing another kiss to both of her cheeks. She rolls her eyes but he sees her smile.

“Can we at least try to put on our costumes? I can see how I feel after that?”

“I already put them away,” Ricky sits up slightly, grabbing his East hoodie and placing it in front of Gina. “You can be Troy Bolten instead.”

“Or, I could be Ricky Bowen from that one documentary–”

Ricky shudders, grabbing her hands, “That was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life, you promised me you’d never bring it up again.”

“I’m sorry,” Gina giggles, “I had to.”

He watches as she snuggles into her favorite hoodie of his; follows her to lie back down. The tip of her nose is red from sniffling constantly, her eyes are tired from lack of sleep, and Ricky knows she feels terrible, but she still smiles at him sleepily; bumps her nose against his.

“I could run down to the Spirit Halloween down the street and grab one of those sexy nurse costumes if that makes you feel better,” he says seriously. “I’m sure there’s at least one still available.”

Gina snorts, shaking her head at him, “Although that is something I’d love to see, I think I’ll pass for today. I feel like pajamas might be good.”

Ricky nods, pressing a kiss to her forehead and getting up to grab his favorite flannel sweatpants and hoodie as well as Gina’s favorite sweatpants from his room. He shoots a quick text to Carlos, letting him know that Gina’s sick and to come home tonight at his own risk, and heads back to the other room where Gina’s curled up with her eyes closed.

“I’m not asleep,” she says quietly, opening one eye to peer at him.

“Sure,” Ricky hums, “I got you pajamas.”

They change into pajamas and Ricky makes Gina the last packet of tea her mom left when she visited a few weeks ago, presenting it to her in the “world’s best writer” mug he got her after their trip to Los Angeles last year. They order soup, eating it while cuddling on the couch and watching Halloweentown , pausing it every ten minutes because Gina has to blow her nose and she doesn’t want to miss any part of the movie (even though she’s seen it a hundred times). 

She goes through a full box of tissues. (“I can’t believe you tried to convince me that you were okay to go out,” Ricky says, laughing when Gina lightly shoves his shoulder in response.)

Gina insists that they draw pictures so she can stay awake, pulling out a box of crayons Ricky didn’t know he owned and getting through one haphazard drawing of the two of them in their Halloween costumes they were supposed to wear tonight before she passes out on Ricky’s shoulder, asleep in a minute.

There’s crumpled tissues overflowing the trashcan and Ricky’s definitely going to be sick tomorrow, but he wonders if this is what every night would look like if they lived together. Minus the whole being sick part, there’s a world in which Ricky and Gina can fall asleep on each other in the middle of a Disney movie every night , and that sounds pretty fucking perfect to him.

When Ricky wakes up the next morning and can’t breathe through his left nostril, he texts their friends to inform them that they won’t be making it to any parties this weekend, texting Jess to let her know Gina won’t be able to get to a rehearsal this weekend, and texting Carlos to inform him that they would be locking themselves in Ricky’s room all weekend and if he could pretty please leave the food they ordered outside of the bedroom door.

Carlos comes home a few hours later, yelling at Ricky through the door that he has a lot to update him on when the room is no longer a contamination zone, and makes a big show of making Ricky wait to open the door until he’s walked down the short hallway, complaining about being all alone this weekend. 

They spend the weekend laying in bed, playing games, FaceTiming their friends while they get ready for their nights out, all of them teasing them about them not even being able to be sick at separate times. They have to send Carlos out to get more boxes of tissues four times and they have to ask him to drop off their food outside his door for every meal, and they tolerate him knocking on the door for signs of life every few hours. (He ends up getting sick, anyway, and complains until his very last sniffle.)

Sunday evening, the end of their stay-in Halloween weekend, Ricky can hear Gina sigh loudly from his bathroom, and figures it's a good sign she can finally breathe through her nose again.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just thinking,” Gina says, leaning on the doorframe to the bathroom, arms crossed, a sad smile at where Ricky lays sideways across his bed, “I’m really sorry I ruined your last Halloween.”

“That’s strange, I didn’t know they took it off the calendar next year.:”

“You know what I mean,” she sinks further into her guilty pout, and tries to throw a new tissue at him, but it goes nowhere, “It's your senior year. And you spent the weekend layering my shivering form in blankets and holding hot mugs of tea to my nose.”

“Cute nose,” he says, because he can’t help it. 

He would literally hold warm objects to any part of Gina’s body that was cold and needed rewarming forever. It could be his full time job. 

“This was lamer than when we used to consider leaving a party at midnight lame.”

“At least then we were lame and you let me kiss you.”

“You’ll get sick—”

“We’re past that point, Gi.”

“I just. I feel really terrible. Actual symptoms not included,” she sniffles only a little.

“You have absolutely no control over when you get sick,” he shakes his head, reaching an arm out in hopes she’ll do her pouting a little closer, “And I’ll be at a party with the same exact guys next weekend, just in regular clothes, which is way easier, anyway.”

“You don’t have to just say that—”

“I know,” he says, earnestly, “This is one of the best weekends I’ve ever had.”

“I hate liars.”

“I’m not lying,” Ricky scooches to the side so Gina can sit on the edge of his bed, looking down at him, tissue in hand at the ready, “We did all the good stuff: movies, cuddles, arts and crafts, that strange dance party to the awful Spotify recommended Halloween music, ordered all the takeout we could splurge on, and not a single person was around to stop us.”

“Just me and you.”

“Just me and you,” he smiles, and holds a pinky up to her, which she takes, links her own around, and presses the side of her cheek to his knuckles.

“You really wanted to be Mario, though.”

“I only wanna be whatever lets me be with you.”

“Okay, Romeo.”

“We can be that next year, Romeo and Juliet,” he plays with the cuff of her (his) sweatshirt, “Because despite what you may believe, I will still be around for Halloween next year.”

“Not if you keep trying to kiss me,” she says, cheekily, “Getting sicker and sicker.”

“In sickness and health, or whatever the saying is.”

“Sickness and health or whatever,” she nods, “You say it like that and I’m leaving you at the altar.”

“I’ll work on it,” Ricky pats the space in the bed beside him, “In the meantime, can you get back in bed?”

“Yeah,” she indulges him in one soft peck, “After we do another round of cough medicine.”

He throws the covers over him and groans at her retreating form.

“Thank god we didn’t get you that nurse costume because if it were up to your nursing skills, we’d never survive,” he hears her in the bathroom, turning on the sink quickly to wash out the mugs from the last abysmal sip of that putrid flavor of cough medicine Carlos picked out ( “it was all they had” — Ricky doesn’t buy it for a second).

“It tastes like shit, Gina.”

“I know for a fact you have a lot of missed shots to make up for this weekend,” she returns to the edge of the bed, matching world's best boyfriend and girlfriend mugs in hand, with 2 little ounces of horrible purple liquid in the bottom of them instead of anything nice, like tea, or soup, or pink and blue toothbrushes that smell like arctic fresh.

With a loud sigh, Ricky sits up, and takes the mug.

“Cheers,” Gina smiles, clinking the top of her mug to his, before they both painfully toss back their medicine. 

It's a far cry from anything he imagined them doing this weekend, but when Gina puts their mugs down and immediately tackles him back onto his comforter in kisses, kisses that make cough medicine taste much, much better, Ricky can’t find a single thing to be disappointed about. 

Anything is perfect wherever he can be with her. 

4. Anna and Kristoff and Olaf Sven

Gina loves Ricky’s apartment door. 

Sure, it was lacking the cute name tags college RAs always taped to the four dorm room doors she had gotten familiar with during his time on campus (though he’s starting to develop a love for home decor stores in his new adulthood and rotates cheesy seasonal wreaths). And true, she hated most other floors in the complex (one trip to the laundry room and never, ever again). And yeah, it wasn’t always fantastic that his apartment was the last in what sometimes felt like a never ending hallway to trudge down if she was carrying a lot (which was the case today).

But nothing could really rival this. The innate feeling of seeing her favorite gray door, the crooked number 14B, the Halloween wreath of the month, and know what waits inside for her.

So she loves his apartment door. Could stare at it for hours. 

Maybe not today, though, arms very full and strength wearing thin.

“Ricky, I told you I was on my way up!” She yells through the door, kicking it in lieu of knocking with no free hand to do so.

She’s about to yell again, patience thin on a Friday afternoon after class, when the door swings open, and she is met with her favorite grin, favorite voice, favorite boy, “I love when you’re in a good mood.”

“And I love when you’re sarcastic, it’s so attractive,” she snaps back, stepping inside. 

“Shit, I wore my black button up shirt you love today and everything, just to ruin it by not enjoying the sound of my door being kicked in.”

“Luckily I didn’t come to see you ,” she teases, making a face before dropping her packages in the kitchen, “Where’s my boy?”

As if on cue, their dog leaps off Ricky’s couch and runs straight towards Gina’s outstretched arms. She squeals with delight, face pinched in the brightest smile at the sound of his adorable pitter-patter run against the hardwood floor. Though not much bigger than the puppy he was when Ricky insisted they not wait any longer to get him (Gina graduating was so far away and Ricky was so impatient and the second they saw this little guy’s face how was Gina supposed to argue with her boyfriend?), Gina lets him win the battle and tackle her to the floor. He jumps on her stomach and presses out glorious giggles from her while he licks all over her face.

“Did you miss me, Wildcat?” She squeaks out between infectious laughter, rolling her head to one side where she lays on the floor to look at Ricky to say, “He says you don’t give him enough treats.”

“I spend half my paycheck on treats.”

“What was that, boy?” Gina holds a hand to her ear, as if the dog is speaking to her, then gasps in mock outrage, “ No belly rubs today ?”

“I got home from work six minutes ago,” Ricky gestures to his school bags tossed on the floor by the door she had bypassed on the way in, “I still have my teacher outfit on.”

“Don’t try to backtrack now, you already said you kept that shirt on because you wanted me to say you look good in it,” Gina laughs up at him, Wildcat finding a comfortable spot under one of her arms, his little face resting on her stomach.

“Do I?”

“Maybe,” she shrugs.

“If he likes you more, that's only because he spends too much time with me,” Ricky says, crouching to find a spot opposite Gina too, laying down so their faces are next to each other, “All I do all day is like you.”

“That’s it?”

“Keeps me busy.”

“Well, I give you permission to take a break from liking me for a minute.”

“And do what instead?” 

“Kiss me,” she hums over his lips, already craning her neck to beat him to it.

“Sounds good to me,” he ducks in with one last smile before he does, kiss her sweetly, on the floor of his apartment. As usual when it comes to kissing Ricky, she’d be fine to do this for any infinite amount of time, but it becomes difficult to do when their puppy gets back to walking over them likely in search of kisses of his own.

“Feeling left out,” Ricky laughs, lifting Wildcat off the floor with ease and plopping him directly in the center of his chest, nuzzling his face cutely into his fur, “He’s growing so much, Gi. I’m gonna hate when he gets too big for him to do this any more.”

“Ricky, I think he could grow to be the size of an elephant and you’d still let him sit right there,” she laughs, knowing she jokes about being Wildcat’s favorite, but he’s got Ricky wrapped around his paw with ease .

“You’re probably right,” he says, and doesn’t seem bothered by it at all. It does insane things to Gina’s poor, unsuspecting heart to see him like this, up so close, and she’ll likely never get used to it. “So, did you just come to get first pick on the best seat for family movie night, or did you by any chance, happen to miss me as much as I missed you?”

“None of the above actually,” she shrugs, shifting her weight with a grunt, so she can hop to standing, “You always give Carlos and Maddox whatever seats they want because you love them more than me and I get stuck on the floor.”

“With the dog you claim loves you more than me so, where else would you wanna be?” Ricky says, his eyes following her walk to the table, hand absently petting Wildcat still on his chest, “And missing me?”

“Right, how was my favorite teacher’s day?”

“It was good, I--”

“Oh, I meant Peyton,” Gina nods, to Ricky, making her way towards the kitchen, “Did they have a good day? I meant to text them on my walk here.”

“Introducing you was the worst idea I’ve ever had.”

Gina loves Ricky’s teacher friends. She got along great with his college friends, but always clung closest to Carlos, and wasn’t too upset when none of them really stayed in touch with her specifically after they graduated. But the teachers at Ricky’s school and literally some of the coolest people she’s ever met, beyond the very sappy fact that she just loves how happy they make Ricky feel at work when she knew how worried he was before he started the job about being a good teacher. 

“I think if I went to your school and had Peyton when I was a kid I would have forced my mom to put roots down here instead of middle of nowhere Utah.”

“You loved Utah.”

“I loved you, and you were in Utah,” Gina smiles, “And now I love it here.”

“Because Peyton is here.”

“And I guess because you’re here too, but mostly Peyton. And Wildcat.”

And though it's teasing, she looks at Ricky on the floor of his apartment that feels kinda like it's theirs and the dog that licks all over his face that really is theirs , and thinks she’d put down roots wherever those two boys took her. Middle of nowhere or middle of a city. Anywhere between.

At risk of getting too sappy and having to call off movie night, a sacred Utah-kids-in-New-York tradition, she clears her throat and continues, “Speaking of things that are here… ” she says, picking up her previously discarded packages, “Guess what came?”

Ricky squints as he tries to make out the packaging, and after a beat or two, he smiles, “Wildcat, it’s your first Halloween!”

Gina squeals in match with his excitement as she picks up the first two of far too many costumes she ordered for the dog, not even stopping to think about her and Ricky, “I don’t even know which one we should try on him first.”

“Hold on, how many did you get?”

Gina bites her lips together in lieu of an answer, guilty.

“When you have no treats for the next few weeks it’s your mom’s fault, remember that,” Ricky whispers to the dog, and Gina blushes, not really feeling too torn up about his teasing when she looks again at the adorable lineup of costumes she had to buy.

“ Look at them, Ricky,” she holds up the first two, a superhero and a dinosaur, “The little cape. The t-rex arms!!” Gina is quite literally buzzing. 

“What happened to ‘ No, Ricky, we can’t be those people. Dogs don’t need costumes. He doesn’t even know what Halloween is ,’?”

“Plans change,” she shrugs, knowing she’s reached peak insufferable dog mom and not caring one bit, “Tell me you’re not gonna die at our dog dressed up as… a hot dog .”

Ricky sits up as Gina runs over, tacky hot dog costume in hand while Wildcat gets re-situated in Ricky’s lap, and her boyfriend whispers to him again, “I love you, boy, but I also love your mother, so we’re gonna have to humor her.”

“This is gonna be your new wallpaper, Bowen,” Gina pays his teasing no mind, and slips the vest-like costume over one side of the dog, and then the other. She velcros the front to secure it in place and feels like the whole apartment complex down to the mice in the basement laundry room can hear her yelp, “Oh my god, I’m gonna cry.”

“Okay, it’s kinda cute,” Ricky tilts his head around to get a good look at the puppy, sitting up perfectly straight in his lap, unsure what to do in his new look.

“ Kinda ?” Gina gasps, “Stay right there.” She backs up a step, and crouches down, pulling her phone out of her pocket, “Say cheese!”

“Say, Gina’s the worst!” Ricky echoes instead, smiling with his face beside Wildcat’s cheekily, and she rolls her eyes, endeared to no end. (New wallpaper indeed. Her perfect little family. She’s really on the verge of tears.)

“Shut up.”

“It’s dehumanizing for him, Gi, a hot dog ? Really?”

“So should I go get the astronaut helmet to try on him next?”

“Seriously, how many did you buy?”

“How was I supposed to choose!?”

“You do know Halloween is one day , Gi?” Ricky says, making quick work of taking the hot dog off the dog and catching the aforementioned helmet Gina tosses him from the large pile on the counter.

“Right, which is why I also got him this little ghost bandana he can wear all month,” she smiles, knowing that’s not what he meant at all. Ricky can’t hide his beaming grin either. 

Before she can open up the dinosaur costume packaging, there’s a knock on the door, er, banging sound is probably more appropriate than knocking.

“Bowen, open up!”

“We’re starving and I’m three seconds away from murdering your best friend!”

The yells come between more harsh banging on the door from the hallway, and Gina winces, “Okay yeah, I can see why you’re not a fan of me when I do that.”

“Would you let the happy campers in before I get another noise complaint from the neighbors from hell next door?”

Gina giggles, Ricky’s neighbors are all wonderful except the older couple who lives next door and Ricky and her pinky promise each other at least twice a day that they’ll never turn into them, and heads for the door to let in the other two guests for movie night.

“I’m gonna kill him,” Maddox huffs, pointing to Carlos before rushing inside, passing Gina two bags of the takeout they offered to pick up on their way.

“So we heard,” Ricky laughs from his seat on the floor.

“Your friend has the worst directional skills,” Maddox says, her annoyance seeping out.

“I’m sorry, we would have had plenty of help navigating to the obscurely located restaurant you insisted we try if you hadn’t used the last of my phone battery on a FaceTime call with your girlfriend!” Carlos fights back, and Gina has to laugh. It sounds like exactly the kind of problem her two best friends would run into together.

“I thoughtfully choose a restaurant that made me think of you,” Maddox sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose, “And you know I only have like a two-hour window of communication time with Ash with the time difference between here and fucking Utah! ”

“Fucking Utah,” Ricky affirms for a heaving Maddox, and the whole room agrees.

“Fucking Utah!”

“He’s leaving out the part where he asked me to use his phone instead of mine to call Ash because farm boy has been texting him again and he wanted plausible deniability,” Maddox adds to the explanation of events.

“Seb is trying again?” Gina’s mouth hangs agape.

“I blocked his number for you last time you were over!” Ricky yells.

“I may or may not have unblocked it in a moment of weakness,” Carlos sheepishly admits, but louder affirms, “And you can re-block it as soon as my phone turns back on.”

Gina pulls the phone charger out of where she knows Ricky stashes it, in a drawer on the left side of his small kitchen island, and swings it around a hand, waving towards Carlos, “C’mon, rebound.”

“Enough,” Carlos warns, and Gina giggles again, plugging the charger into the wall and squeezing an arm around Carlos’s shoulder when he reaches her.

“Okay great, now that we got all that out,” Maddox sighs heavily, shakes out her hands with her eyes closed, composing herself, “Let me see my nephew.”

Ricky laughs and releases Wildcat from his perch in his lap, and his feet do their adorable pitter patter across the room towards Maddox instantaneously. Without missing a beat, she gasps again, scooping him up, “I can’t believe you’re letting them get away with this, Wildcat.”

She pokes at his floppy astronaut helmet, and turns to face Gina, “What happened to the Superman thing you told me you were getting?”

“I did get that,” sheepish guilt returns to Gina’s voice when she says it, leans her elbows on the counter.

“And just about every other option she saw online too, while she was at it!” Ricky yells, still sitting on the floor. 

Gina sticks her tongue out at him like a little kid, while Carlos combs through the piles of costumes on the counter they’re standing by, “Oh my god, he’s not kidding. You bought out Amazon, Gina.”

“I don’t know why this surprises any of you. She’d buy this dog his own mansion, if it were possible,” Maddox says, letting said dog lick kisses all over her face, “Ricky too though, so leave my girl alone.”

“I didn’t tell her to return them!”

“Hold on, I’m sorry, what is this ?” Carlos cuts them all off, when he holds up one particular costume from the bunch, and waves it at Ricky and Gina, expectantly.

“Oh my god, you found it?” Ricky forgets Carlos, and looks at Gina to ask excitedly, who nods. Smiling, he continues, “Gi, had the best idea for our costume, but said she was having trouble finding the one for Wildcat.”

“Never underestimate the powers of a mother on a mission,” Gina smirks, proudly.

“Sorry, I can’t make out what that says,” Maddox leans forward, tries to read the name on the package, but Carlos is yelling before she gets the chance.

“It’s Olaf!” He huffs, “They’re dressing their dog up as Olaf!”

It was, hands down, the most brilliant idea Gina ever had. Ricky as Kristoff, her as Anna, nostalgic and adorable as ever, and their dog as the cute as a button side kick. Unfortunately, the market for Olaf dog costumes wasn’t the most expansive, and she had to end up on a strange Etsy shop for the right sized one that didn’t look like it would give every kid who came to Ricky’s apartment door nightmares. 

“Oh that’s adorable,” Maddox agrees.

“Right?!”

“No, no, it’s not adorable, it’s terrible ,” Carlos is insistent, and his annoyance makes the rest of the room stifle laughter, “It was one thing to play inanimate objects all throughout high school, but now you’re dressing your dog as me!”

“Dressing him as Olaf,” Ricky corrects.

“When you think of Olaf do you not think of me?”

“Well now I’m gonna think of their dog,” Maddox adds fuel to the fire, teasingly, and Carlos flops his head onto the counter in defeat.

Gina tries to run a hand soothingly on his shoulder, “I thought you’d be flattered. We love you so much we’re dressing our only son up as you.”

“That didn’t make it better.”

“Would it help,” Ricky starts, tilting his head cutely to one side, “If I told you I wanted you to be his godfather but was waiting for the right time to ask?”

“Dear god no,” Carlos’s distress is muffled by his head still in his elbows, “Did you think now was the right time?”

“That’s a big deal, Los, I barely got Gina to allow me to take the title Aunt Maddie.”

“C’mon, I got you a mug to make it official and everything,” Ricky jumps up to standing and runs towards the kitchen.

“Not another freaking mug, Ricky, I have no more room,” Carlos laments, even as Ricky reaches up on his tip toes for the personalized mug he was storing. Ever since the ‘world’s best boyfriend’ mug made an appearance years ago, Ricky has made it his mission to order every possible personalization of mug for any person in his life for any reason or occasion whatsoever. The secret sixth love language: personalized mugs.

Gina giggles as her boyfriend shows off the latest iteration, ‘world’s best godfather’, to a reluctant Carlos.

“If Carlos is against Olaf, I personally think Wildcat would make a perfect stage manager,” Maddox says, jokingly, but within seconds, Gina tosses her a little plush microphone headset.

“Could he not have been something else? Sven was right there,” He tries to reason again, “Don’t we hate EJ?”

“We don’t hate EJ,” Gina tries to placate.

“Speak for yourself,” Ricky mumbles under his breath, and catches a hi-five from Carlos around her back.

“We don’t hate you Carlos, either, and I did get him the antlers, also,” Gina says, moving the t-rex costume aside to show the package with the little antlers headpiece for Sven, “The Olaf one just looks so much cuter.”

“You haven’t even put it on him yet, how do you know that?”

“Great idea!” Maddox claps, still holding the puppy of the hour in her arms in the living area, “Try them both on, we can put it to a vote!”

The Olaf one is, it turns out, objectively cuter once they get it on him, and even Carlos is cracking under the pressure and smiling when they all ooh and ahh over the dog.

Unfortunately, no one gives Wildcat the memo, and the cuteness lasts all of three seconds before he decides there is nothing in the world he hates more than this Olaf costume, and makes it his mission to start flinging his little body around to try to maneuver it off of him, which he does not do with a single other costume in the extensive fashion show. 

He loves the antlers. He barks when Gina tries to take them off and is only quiet when he gets them back on. 

Carlos sips hot chocolate from his new mug with absolute glee.

“Definitely my godson,” Carlos says, when they finally start up the movie, and for the first time in weeks since their tradition started, Gina gets a spot on the couch because Carlos stays on the floor with the dog curled up at his side, “Never said a bad word about you, Wildcat.”

Gina loves Ricky’s apartment door, but may need to amend her statement, because everything that happens on the other side of it is so good. The thought of graduation looming is so scary and leaves her with a miles long checklist of things to do and prepare for.

How lucky she is, to have the biggest and most daunting one, already figured out. 

Her family , she thinks, pressed into Ricky’s side as he dozes off five minutes into the movie after a long day of work but insistent on keeping the tradition alive, at Maddox jumping to answer Ashlyn’s FaceTime on Gina’s phone, her own still dead, and maybe Utah isn’t the worst , and Carlos coming back to the apartment the next day, arms fuller than Gina’s were with costumes, with toys for his favorite godson.

Doesn’t matter the door, she guesses. Her family is right here. 

5. Peter and MJ

Ricky’s ears are ringing.

He loves his job, he really does. He loves helping these kids create music, watching them find comfort in one of the few things that gave him comfort as a kid. He loves talking to them and hearing all their big ideas and plans about how they’re going to save the world. He loves watching their eyes light up when they get a chord correct for the first time or sing something they think sounds really good.

However, when your classroom is full of thirty-some fourth graders with one plastic recorder each for an hour straight, you might be inclined to have a brief moment of reflection on what exactly you’re doing with your life. He tried to be festive, but looking back on it now, he might move the recorder unit to a time in the year when he won’t have to have them attempt to play “Spooky Scary Skeletons”. 

He sighs, welcoming the brief silence of the classroom after the bell rang and the kids stormed out, all ready and excited for a night of candy and ghosts and tricks and treats. He knows the quiet will only last for so long, as kids will start arriving back to the school in an hour for trick or treating, but he’ll take what he can get.

It’s one of the reasons Ricky even applied to work at this school. Every year on Halloween, the school hosts a Trick or Treat party - all of the teachers dress up (some more than others, you won’t catch Ricky complimenting Mr. Allen the third-grade teacher on his elaborate costume of a chef’s hat - who also planned to hand out pencils for his trick or treaters), have candy at their doors (state allergy guidelines approved, of course), and the kids get to go door to door and get candy. There have been bets going in the teachers’ lounge all week discussing what candies will be the most popular. Ricky raided Gina’s theatre’s reject costume closet for extra costumes for the kids that couldn’t get one in time on the only weekday she had off in September (it defeated the purpose of Gina not knowing Ricky was there when he left a sticky note on her mirror that said “love you more-er!” but it was worth it to hear Gina call him a dork when she came over the next day). 

Anyway. It’s safe to say Ricky’s excited, if you ignore his head pounding every few minutes. 

He dug out his Spider-Man costume from his freshman year of college two weeks ago to get it dry cleaned because “it has wrinkles , Gina. Peter Parker doesn’t have wrinkles in his suit,” and has proudly hung it in his room ever since, counting down the days till he gets to wear it again. To be honest, he doesn’t remember much of the Halloween night he wore it freshman year except for Carlos not letting him forget that he cried after Gina called him my Spider-Man on the phone when they sent photos. (In his defense, he may have had a drink or two, he hadn’t seen her in over two months, and it was getting really hard for him to keep the secret that he was flying back to Salt Lake to surprise her for her birthday in a couple of weeks.)

Ricky also roped Gina into helping him decorate his classroom a week ago when he realized he was the only teacher in the extracurricular hall that didn’t have a single Halloween-themed item hung in his room:

“Hey, Gi.”

Ricky watches as Gina closes the door shut behind her, dropping her things on the floor, putting her keys on the hook on the wall, and replacing her sneakers with the bunny slippers she keeps at Ricky’s place. She glances at Ricky once, then looks around the room, her eyes zeroing in on the countertop Ricky is sitting at, which is covered in scraps of orange and black construction paper.

“Hi, Ricky.”

“How was class?”

“Class was fine. What’s, um, what’s going on here?”

“Just arts and crafts.”

“Arts and crafts?”

“Mhmm.”

Gina walks over to him, crossing her arms over her chest. Her eyebrows are furrowed, but one side of her mouth is quirked up and Ricky can see his favorite crinkle in the corner of her eye that tells him she’s trying not to laugh at him.

“I decided I want to decorate my classroom for Halloween,” he says. “Peyton decorated their room during our lunch break today and even the P.E. teachers have decorated the gym, Gi, I think if I don’t decorate my classroom at least a little bit, one of the kids might try to put fake cockroaches inside the pianos again.”

“Ah,” Gina nods, pressing her arm against his and picking up an orange piece of paper with holes cut into it. She turns to him, holding it up with a questioning eyebrow raised.

“It’s supposed to be a pumpkin,” Ricky explains, taking it from her hand and holding it in front of her face, twisting it around in hopes that she sees the pumpkin shape. “I figured the janitors wouldn’t like it very much if I had to get rid of rotten pumpkins in a couple of weeks so I’m settling for paper ones. And I want to string a bunch of lights around the room and put those gel ghost and skeleton things up that stick to the windows.”

“You’re cute,” Gina says, kissing the tip of his nose. Ricky’s heart skips a beat, and feels his face getting warm.

“Will you help me? Because I think my pumpkins look more like Big Red’s old car.”

“Not a bad car.”

“No. A fantastic car, really. But not what I’m aiming for here. And maybe you should give me a kiss for good luck, so I don’t mess up another pumpkin.”

Gina looks down, hiding her smile and shaking her head slightly, and Ricky marvels at the way the blush crosses her cheeks.

He leans toward her, “two kisses?”

She leans into him, looking at him through her eyelashes (and, wow, Ricky cannot believe his luck), but moves around him at the last second, reaching for the extra pair of scissors across the counter. 

“Give me the scissors, Bowen,” Gina says, grinning. (He steals a kiss for each pumpkin they cut out, even for the ones that only pass as pumpkins if you squint and turn your head sideways.)

Now, his room had orange, green, and purple lights strung all on the walls. Orange construction paper pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns hung on fishing line from the tiles in the ceiling (one of Ricky’s first graders, Sophie, told him that she and her best friend Rachel liked to pretend they were clouds in the sky and tell each other which shapes they saw. There was a heated debate over whether one looked more like a jelly bean or a potato the other day. All Ricky knows is he can tell you exactly which ones Gina cut out and which ones he cut out). Gel skeletons and ghosts stuck to his windows, and so many of them had been ripped to pieces that he couldn’t even tell what they were originally supposed to be at first. 

A few days ago, the other music teacher and the art teachers cornered him in the teachers’ lounge and presented him with the “teaching rite of passage” - his first set of holiday-themed pencils - which he immediately put in his favorite mug on his desk (the one Gina gave him when he was offered the job, white with black lettering saying “world’s greatest teacher” on the side that faced his seat). 

At his apartment, he had a welcome mat outside that said “welcome scaredy cats” that he’d gotten for $3 at the grocery store that kept getting moved up and down the hallway by his neighbors and a wreath of black leaves and purple and green sparkling lights to match. (And the cheap blanket with skeletons on it Gina had gotten from Target because his landlord refused to turn the heat on until the entire building was knocking on his door with blue fingers.)

“You ready for your first Halloween trick or treat event as a teacher?” Peyton Hart, Ricky’s classroom neighbor and best teacher friend enters his room, already dressed in their costume of a skeleton onesie. Ricky has been teasing them for the simplicity of it for a week, but they insist comfort is more important. 

“Definitely not,” Ricky says. “Why didn’t you tell me not to use the gel decorations that stick to the windows? If I had known the kids were just going to tear them up into a million pieces, I would’ve just bought them all Halloween-themed stress balls.”

“I figured you’d figure it out soon enough,” they lean against the doorway. “For example, how you probably shouldn’t try to have a classroom full of elementary schoolers new to the recorder playing minor chords, even if it’s festive.”

“Ugh,” Ricky rubs circles into his temples. “Don’t remind me. I’m pretty sure the whole school heard it. Next year I’ll do the unit at the same time as Amaya does hers so we can all just suffer at once.”

“I’ll put in a request for more sound-proofing for your room, too.”

“Why does it have to be recorders? Why can’t the city pay for thirty ukuleles? That’d be so much more fun to teach,” Ricky moves to his bathroom (yes, he got the music classroom with the attached bathroom, he brags about it to the other teachers at least once a day) to change into his costume. He’d been wearing it all day under his clothes so that he didn’t have to spend thirty minutes trying to get it on in a tiny single-stall, a choice he is very grateful for right now.

“You’d rather have thirty kids learning ‘Riptide’?” Peyton asks through the door.

“I mean, maybe not ‘Riptide,’ but at least I won’t feel like I burst an eardrum every time someone plays the wrong note,” Ricky walks out of the bathroom, shutting the door behind him and throwing his bag of clothes behind his desk.

“We should send someone on a coffee run again,” Peyton says as they walk out of the room. “I went this morning, so it’s technically your turn.”

Ricky slides down, back against the wall, into a sitting position on the floor outside the door of his classroom. His head falls to the side, watching Peyton adjust the crooked ghost poster on their door. 

“How long does this thing last again?”

“It goes till six, but honestly most of the kids leave earlier,” Peyton says. “They get tired out pretty quickly, running up and down the halls. We have to make sure we clean up after them, though, so we’re on double duty, we can’t have another kid slip and break something again.”

“Again?”

“Two years ago, Bryce Williams was running down the third-grade hallway on Halloween, slipped on a candy wrapper, and broke his leg against the wall. Absolute nightmare.”

“Paperwork for days ,” the other art teacher, Quinn Walker (covered in tattoos, coolest person Ricky knows, dogsits on the side, answered Ricky’s constant questions about dogs when he was first searching for a shelter) shouts from her room. She starts walking towards her door, hands full of buckets of candy, clad in a unicorn onesie. “Bryce thought it was hilarious. Spent two weeks convincing the entire school that the hallway was haunted and that’s why he broke his leg. I had to walk kids through that hallway for the rest of the school year because they refused to go alone.”

“Some of the parents were pissed, though. We had to call an ambulance and the whole event got shut down an hour early. Apparently, nobody wanted to take their kids home on a sugar high,” Peyton shakes their head, sitting down in front of their door, tennis ball in hand. (The art and music teachers have slowly been stealing the P.E. teachers’ tennis balls from their supply. They’re up to eight and neither of them have noticed. They’re very proud of themselves.)

“It was a nasty break, too,” Quinn says, sitting down in front of her door. “We just have to make sure all of the candy wrappers go in the trash can and not on the floor.” She gestures to Peyton for the ball, and they roll it to her. “Where’s Amaya?”

(Amaya Ford, the other music teacher - can keep any plant alive for eternity, knows how to play any instrument you put in front of her, makes sure to remind Ricky once a week that she was one of the winners of tickets to see the premiere of Frozen: The Musical: The Documentary .)

“I think she’s attempting to steal another tennis ball,” Peyton says. “Or getting her candy from the front office.”

“This is the quietest your room has been all school year, Ricky,” Quinn nods to his room, rolling the ball to him.

“I had to tell the kids they couldn’t stay after in my room today,” Ricky says. Usually, he allows any kid that wants to stay after school to stay in his room, but he knew the school would be busy with last-minute Halloween preparations. “I felt bad, but I’ll see them tonight.”

“What’s up, losers,” Amaya turns down the hallway, dressed in a black dress that trails behind her, a witch’s hat resting on her head, bouncing a tennis ball to Quinn, who catches it with a whoop and a smile, pulling out her phone to add the tally to their shared note keeping track of the ones they’ve stolen. Amaya turns toward Ricky, nodding, “And Frozen: The Musical: The Documentary star, Ricky Bowen.”

Ricky groans, throws the tennis ball in Amaya’s direction, then puts his head in his hands.

“Anything interesting happen today?”

“Ricky regretted his career choice a few times today, I think,” Peyton says.

“Well, if he only listened to me–” Amaya starts.

“I truly thought you were exaggerating. I did not think I would enter this building with my hearing intact and leave with–,” Ricky says into his hands.

“Oh my god, is that Gina Porter? From Frozen: The Musical: The Documentary ?” Amaya interrupts suddenly, causing Ricky’s head to shoot up and look towards the end of the hallway.

Sure enough, “The one and only,” Gina says. She walks down the hallway, a white “vote for women” long-sleeve shirt tucked into black jeans with black Converse that Ricky had gotten her a couple of years ago (so they could match). She waves to Ricky, and, yeah, it’s only a tee shirt and jeans, and, yeah, he might be a little delirious from his headache, but he thinks briefly that she’s never looked better.

“Hi,” he says, standing up when she reaches him. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I can leave–”

“No -”

“I was gonna crash your Halloween party–”

“Please do,” Ricky grabs her hand and pulls her toward him.

“I don’t know, you didn’t sound so excited to see me, maybe I’ll just wait–” Ricky quiets her with a kiss and feels her smiling against his lips. Her hand goes to the nape of his neck, twisting into the curls there.

“How do I look?” She asks when she pulls away. She takes a step back and does a spin, only letting go of Ricky’s hand to turn around before grabbing it again. “I wanted to go for the No Way Home look with the green jacket and sweater but I didn’t have any luck at the thrift stores.”

“You look perfect, Gi,” he says, pulling her hand up to his mouth and pressing a kiss to her knuckles.

“You two are gross, this is a school! I’ll text Carlos!” Peyton says, and Ricky regrets introducing them to each other, honestly.

“Nobody’s here, Peyton!”

“I brought you Tylenol, too–”

“I love you.”

“Peyton said you had a headache.” 

“I love you,” Ricky’s eyes are closed but he can tell Gina’s smiling.

“You are the biggest baby on the planet,” she says, patting his cheek and leading him into his classroom.

“I didn’t think that I’d get a headache from an hour of recorders! I didn’t think it’d be that bad!”

“So you just have more faith in your students than the rest of us do, apparently.”

“Hey,” Ricky says defensively. “That’s not a bad thing.”

“Of course it’s not,” Gina says. “They don’t call you the world’s best teacher for nothing. You even have the mug to prove it.”

“Hell yeah, I do,” Ricky takes the Tylenol Gina hands him and lays down on his (probably disgusting) floor, staring up at their pumpkins. He points one out, “Sophie told me that one looked like a cotton ball today. I don’t know what she’s going to do in class when I take them down. She might have to actually pay attention.”

“We’ll cut out turkeys for Thanksgiving,” Gina lays down next to him, pressing her arm against his. “Or we can cut out autumn leaves.”

Ricky hums. “Snowflakes for winter.”

“Next year, we can cut out some bats to hang up with the pumpkins, too.”

“I don’t know, Gi, we might have to see if the craft store a few blocks over offers a lesson on cutting paper first. Bats seem a little advanced for me.”

He can wait here for a few minutes, Ricky thinks. He can lie on the floor with his girlfriend until the Tylenol kicks in and, honestly, he wouldn’t hate it if they just didn’t move at all.

“Would you still love me if I fundraised in Times Square for more instruments for this class? Like, for example, ukuleles?”

“I’ll have to think about it. You should wear your Kristoff costume, people might recognize you and be more likely to donate to the Ricky Bowen.”

“I’d rather them recognize and be more likely to donate to famous Broadway and TikTok Star, Gina Porter’s boyfriend,” Ricky feels her laugh against him, her hand coming up to play with his curls. “I could stand in the lobby before your shows with a bucket and ask people to donate money for the music program.”

“Absolutely not.”

“I’ll teach the whole audience a lesson during intermission to prove I can teach and I just need money.”

“A lesson?”

“Yeah on like, harmonicas or something. I’ll teach everybody Piano Man ,” Ricky’s eyes are closing and all he can think about is how he never thought he’d be falling asleep on the floor of a classroom with his girlfriend. And he knows he has to get up and get ready for the kids to start arriving in twenty minutes. If only Gina would stop playing with his hair–

“You’re going to supply harmonicas to an entire Broadway audience? With what money?”

“...Maybe I’ll just do one per–”

“Do not finish that sentence, Ricky Bowen, do you want us to get sued?” 

Ricky huffs, turning his face into Gina’s shoulder. They did their laundry together this weekend because almost all of the machines in Ricky’s building were broken and he turned it into an excuse to hang out with her. She smells like his detergent and it makes him a little dizzy.

He asks her how her classes were today and she says they were good, and she talks about how her and Jess perfected one of the moves they’d been trying to land all week, and Ricky wishes he could have at least thirty minutes alone with her like this every day.

“Hey, lovebirds,” Amaya knocks on the classroom door. “The kids will start to get here in a few minutes.”

Ricky stands up, grabbing Gina’s hand she holds out to him and pulling her up with him.

“Is your head feeling better?” She asks, adjusting the neckline of his suit.

“Yeah. Thank you,” Ricky says, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “I’m so gonna kick your ass in Mario Kart tonight.”

Gina snorts, “we’re gonna get home and you’re gonna crash immediately and you’re gonna leave me to handle the kids that come trick or treating because you know your neighbors aren’t answering their door.”

“They probably went to Transylvania for the weekend, doing evil things like terrorizing packs of wolves or something,” Ricky says seriously.

“Why would they be terrorizing packs of wolves?”

“I don’t know. Wolves are basically dogs right? And I think they have it out for Wildcat, every time I take him out in the mornings, they literally open the door to give me a dirty look.”

“Weird. They don’t do that when I take him out,” Gina says, her eyebrows furrowed in disbelief.

“They probably like you better.”

“I don’t even live there.”

“That can change, Gina-rina, just say the word–”

“Hmm, nope,” Gina makes a motion of zipping his lips shut and throwing away the key. “We’re not having this discussion until I know when I’m graduating, Bowen.”

Ricky huffs, putting a hand out to lead Gina back out to the hallway where she bounds immediately to Amaya’s room for an updated tour of the plants in her room (and Ricky wants her next to him all the time, but he’d be lying if it didn’t make him giddy to see her close with his teacher friends).

When the kids finally arrive, they’re excited and jumping around so much that Ricky fears for their parents, who have to deal with their actual sugar rush in a couple hours when they go back home. And honestly, it’s a little bit funny to see the varying levels of stress the parents all show on their faces as they follow their kids around, some of them sending tight-lipped smiles and nods to the teachers, and others shaking their hands or making small talk.

Ricky introduces Gina to everyone who asks who she is, and Peyton shakes their head when they notice that every one of Ricky’s students already knows who she is. (He talks about her a lot and has pictures of her on his desk, can you blame him?)

One kid dressed as Miles Morales whom Ricky doesn’t know stops to stand in front of them for a few minutes, a pondering look on his face.

“Are you supposed to be MJ?” He asks carefully.

“She’s my MJ,” Ricky says, gesturing to his Spider-Man costume, smiling at Gina when she rolls her eyes at him.

“Your MJ costume is better than his Peter Parker costume,” the kid says matter-of-factly.

Ricky’s jaw drops as Peyton, Amaya, and Quinn all laugh at him, but Gina crouches down and thanks the kid on behalf of them both and gives him an extra piece of candy, a finger over her lips encouraging secrecy. 

He’s not the only one enamored by Gina instantly. At one point, Ricky completely walks away from his door to say something to Quinn, and when he gets back, three sets of parents are talking to Gina, thanking her for being such a great teacher. She is an excellent actress indeed, and takes every compliment with a wink over their shoulders at Ricky.

He is a terrible actor. He cannot hide an inch of emotion on his face, and tonight all that is showing is how insanely in love with Gina he is.

The night continues on in much of the same fashion. Compliment on his costume, hand out candy, smile for a picture, apologize to every parent who says they’ve now got a little musician in the family, and let the world fawn over Gina.

Ricky does not have favorite students. Absolutely not. But any student who refused to pick up the recorder this week was raking in the brownie points. One of his first graders, Harper, was taking those brownie points very seriously . Leaves her recorder on the mat every time she’s in the room and insists on dancing instead. 

Ricky hears her coming before she’s even in the hallway.

“MR BOWEN!!!!”

“Harper!” He yells back, with equal enthusiasm when she breaks just about every rule and ditches her parents to instead barrel full speed ahead down the hallway, smacks into Ricky’s legs for a pint-sized hug.

“Do you like my costume?” she says, before he can really get a look at it, because she’s still hugging him.

“I love it.”

“I’m a ballerina!” she squeals, spinning to her pink tutu twirls and Ricky bites back a giggle.

“The best ballerina ever,” he offers her a hi-five, which she takes, “You gonna teach me any moves?”

“You can’t dance, Mr. Bowen!” she is doubled over in the most adorable six-year-old laughter, because of course Mr Bowen can’t dance.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a bad dancer!”

“I am not!”

“Don’t let him change your mind,” Gina reappears in the doorway, just returning from across the hall after sitting with Peyton for a while, and bends at the waist slightly to smile conspiratorially at Ricky’s littlest student, and whisper, “You’re right, he’s a terrible dancer.”

Harper likes Mr Bowen’s music class. But she loves Gina Porter.

Her little brain must absolutely short circuit at the sight of Gina, who Ricky has been telling her about since school started. Harper made it clear week one that she had no interest in musical instruments--she was going to be a Broadway dancer. Which of course, meant Ricky had to tell her all about his girlfriend, who also wanted to be a Broadway dancer (and would be, after she graduated in the spring.) Harper would come bounding into class every time immediately asking for more stories about Miss Gina the Ballerina. So her Halloween costume choice does not surprise Ricky in the slightest.

She is absolutely starstruck, it seems, to realize Mr Bowen didn’t make her up this whole time. 

“Hi,” Gina says lightly, looking between Ricky and the girl, beaming. She’s heard Ricky talk about her a couple times, “Is this--”

“See, Harper, I told you I’d bring Gina to school one day!”

“Miss Gina, I think you are the bestest dancer in the whole entire world,” Harper stretches her arms wide to emphasize her point, and Ricky feels like melting into the tile floor.

“Oh,” Gina gasps, throws a hand over her mouth, “That can’t be true, because Mr Bowen told me you’re the bestest dancer in the entire world.”

“Really?”

Gina nods, “Think you could teach me to do that twirl?”

“Really?” She repeats, just before Gina steps out of the small doorway, and makes room for Harper to show her the ropes on how real ballerinas twirl.

Ricky has a lot of these moments, moments where time really feels like it stands still, and he’s sure he couldn’t get happier if he tried. He doesn't have enough fingers on one hand to count the times it has happened today alone: tossing the tennis ball back and forth across the hallway with Peyton, meeting parents of students he’s already grown to love so much, Harper running away without even getting a piece of candy because dancing with Gina was the best treat of the night, losing track of time swiping through pictures of Wildcat’s costume photoshoot from movie night for Quinn, playing impromptu songs for families on his turned over empty candy bucket.

It’s Gina picking up forgotten candy wrappers from his doorway, eating pink starbursts that are still her favorite and tossing all the other flavors to Amaya, laughing. It’s Gina rolling up her long white sleeves, trying to puff a fallen curl out of the way of her forehead. It’s Gina’s cheeks turning bright red as she shushes Maddox on Facetime, who bursts into an off-key rendition the wedding march when she hears Gina is spending her Halloween at Ricky’s school, just because she missed him. 

It’s Gina cleaning up the last of the things, tossing her bag over her shoulder, and completely subconsciously, not even really looking at him, yells, “C’mon Spidey, let's go home.”

Home.

He knows they’re putting off moving in together until she’s graduated, but isn’t it a nice thing to get used to hearing. Let’s go home. 

+1 Home

Ricky loved his childhood home. It was warm, safe, and nostalgic. He had good memories there, like his first playdate with Nini; his first playdate with Big Red. He unwrapped his first skateboard in the family room, his mom beaming at him from the sofa. He studied the dances for High School Musical there. But he also had bad memories there – his parents fighting downstairs while he was in his room, his mom leaving for work trip after work trip; his mom leaving for good.

Ricky loved the apartment he and his dad shared. He had good memories there – really good memories. With his dad, Nini, Gina, Jet; Big Red. It was smaller and it was a change. But, it had the living room with the couch he and Gina didn’t get up from for a 24-hour movie marathon. It had the kitchen he and his dad had Thanksgiving dinner together until Gina and her mom came over to play Hedbanz for hours until one of their neighbors banged on their wall until they shut up. It had the bedroom he, Big Red, and Jet first got drunk in, giggling and stealing liquor from his dad’s cabinet on the singular rare occasion he had to go away for work. 

(Ricky loved Gina’s mom’s house in Salt Lake. He loved the hanger that belonged to him in the coat closet and the corner of the hallway that was reserved for his skateboard and helmet to lean up against. He loved the coffee table in the living room that he and Gina put together that was a little wonky because they may or may not have misplaced a screw and had to improvise.)

Ricky didn’t love his freshman dorm. He loved his roommate; he loved being with Carlos all the time (he didn’t love getting kicked out when dates came to stay), but he loved visiting his room at home more.

Ricky loved his college dorm sophomore and junior year. The bed was shit, the bathroom was hardley ever fully functioning, and the room itself was the size of a freezer, but it felt like home. He loved the elevators for never working because they gave him more time to spend with Gina by walking up the stairs. It felt like home when Carlos accidentally set off the fire alarm making popcorn for movie night, it felt like home when Gina would come over and steal all of his hoodies, it felt like home when Maddox put up a whiteboard keeping tally of the point system they created flinging hair ties across the room at each other during movie nights. It felt like home with his “world’s best boyfriend” mug in the corner of the sink of the bathroom, three different colored toothbrushes sticking out of it. It felt like family.

Ricky loved the apartment he had his senior year of college (and the year after). He still had the world’s best roommate (and the mug to prove it), he still had the most amazing friends ever that were over more often than not, and he still had his best friend and favorite person sleeping over at least three nights a week. He had half of her clothes in his closet and an extra toothbrush for her in his bathroom. Later, he starts to fill the small wall next to the kitchen with tickets of every one of Gina’s shows he goes to and a calendar crossing off the days till her graduation. Later, he has pictures of himself playing instruments and swinging around as Spider-Man and doing other ridiculous activities drawn by his students stuck to the refrigerator with magnets, one of them a free magnet from the place down the street he and Gina visit at least once a week. Later, he has dog fur stuck to every single surface and a wide range of squeaky toys for any occasion that Carlos and Gina insist Wildcat needs. He has family.

Ricky loves their new apartment. It’s a small one-bedroom in the city, and it currently contains no more than exactly two boxes of cereal (Lucky Charms for Ricky and Cheerios for Gina), one blow-up mattress, a suitcase full of whatever clothes they threw into it the night before, a phone charger, a few packaged Halloween costumes, a bucket of candy, a dog bed (and the dog it belongs to, who was currently baring his teeth at the kitten that Ricky might be currently holding in his arms. That, maybe, his girlfriend doesn’t know about.)

His girlfriend, who happens to be calling him right now.

“Hey,” he answers on the first ring.

“Hi!” Gina sounds out of breath. He knows she just ran out of rehearsal and is probably speed-walking down the streets of New York. “How does it look?”

They’d been searching for months. Apartments in New York are hard to come by as they are, and with rent hitting all-time highs every other day, it was getting more and more difficult to get their names down for anything. They weren’t picky, it was more important that the place was closer to Broadway, so Gina didn’t have to take thirty different Subway connections and walk twelve miles before she got to work (a slight exaggeration, but you get the point). Gina would be sending him links during her stretch snack breaks in rehearsal. Ricky would respond to them all and send about thirty during his lunch break and planning period. This one popped up, the perfect distance from Broadway and Ricky’s school, and they put their names into the hat right away. 

Of course, their move-in date was Halloween. So, Gina took the early morning rehearsal to be free in the afternoon, and, luckily it was a Saturday, so Ricky didn’t have to call in a substitute teacher to fill in for him. He got the keys at one in the afternoon, after a small detour to one of his student's place to pick up an unnamed kitten Gina has no idea about (because how do you say no to one of your favorite students asking you if you want a kitten because they couldn’t find a home for it?).

“It looks good, Gi,” he says, trying to stop the kitten from biting on his thumb. “Wildcat has smelled just about every inch of it, I think. The natural light is actually really nice, I was kinda worried because it was so dark when we saw it last week. The previous tenants didn’t steal the laundry machines and they look like they work.”

“Fuck yes,” Gina says.

“We’re gonna have to buy so much stuff. Like, seriously. It looked small when we first saw it, but now that it’s empty…”

“Facebook Marketplace, baby,” Gina’s panting on the other end, still likely running, and Ricky knows he probably looks like an idiot because he can’t stop smiling at her excitement. “You and I are gonna lug furniture up and down this island like it’s nothing.”

“I, uh, I have a surprise for you, too,” Ricky says nervously. The kitten is staring at him and he thinks it might be a death stare in response to Ricky not letting her have his thumb for lunch.

“I don’t like surprises, Ricky.”

“I know,” Ricky says quickly. “You’re gonna love this one!”

“That doesn’t sound convincing–”

“I’ll see you in a minute, love you, bye!”

It only takes three minutes for there to be a knock at the door (Gina doesn’t have her key yet), and Ricky might be freaking out a little bit because, holy shit , this is their apartment. Both of their names are on the lease. And, sure, they’ve both already toured it multiple times, and, sure, they’ve had shared notes on their phone going for weeks full of plans and details for the apartment, but today it’s officially theirs. Together. Ricky and Gina. Ricky and Gina’s names on a legal document togeth–

“Ricky Bowen, let me in!” Gina’s pounding on the door and he can hear her bouncing back and forth on the balls of her feet.

He swings the door open and she pushes past him immediately, picking up Wildcat (who’s jumping up on her), and walking towards the middle of the room. Ricky thinks that she looks like a kid in a candy store, spinning around in their apartment, taking it in. Although, there’s not much to take in. It’s tiny. The kitchen is barely big enough for one person, the living area might be big enough to fit a small couch, the door to the washing machine and dryer doesn’t close unless you hold the handle at an angle, their bedroom won’t fit anything more than a queen bed, they’re basically paying an arm and a leg each for a shoebox, but it’s theirs .

“I can’t believe we have our own laundry machines,” Gina says, pressing on the handle of the door to get it open to look at said laundry machines. “This is a luxury. And no more of your scary laundry room.”

“It wasn’t that scary.”

“You guys couldn’t run more than three washers at a time.”

“It encouraged community within the apartment complex!”

“There were rats living behind all of the machines.”

“Those were mice ! You told me they were mice!”

“Once, I pulled a dead cockaroach out of the lint catcher.”

“Now you’re just making things up.”

“We don’t have to buy two separate detergents anymore,” Gina says, smiling at him and closing the door to the laundry. “No more separate closets!”

“Please,” Ricky snorts. “Half of my hoodies became yours and half of your clothes were in my closet. We never had separate closets.”

“It was convenient,” she says. She makes her way toward Ricky and she looks at him with so much love clear in her eyes that Ricky has to look away before he does something stupid, like kiss her, when they have things to do.

“Welcome home, Gi,” Ricky says, kissing her temple (whoops) and pulling her into him, swaying them back and forth. She still has her dance bags in one arm, a dog in the other, and she smells like about fifteen different kinds of hairspray, but Ricky doesn’t think he’s ever loved her more. “Missed you.”

Gina hums, pressing a kiss to the side of his neck, next to where her head is resting on his shoulder.

“Ricky.”

“Gina.”

“Why do you have a cat in your arms?”

“Oh. That,” Ricky says, huffing out a laugh. “Stuffed animal.”

“It’s meowing.”

“Okay, listen,” Ricky starts as Gina pulls away from him, setting her dance bags down on the floor along with Wildcat, who beelines to the squeaky carrot toy Carlos had gotten him, and crosses her arms over her chest.

“Listening.”

“Remember Sam? I told you about him the other day, his family had the cat that had a litter of, like, eight kittens? He came into my room yesterday upset because they had one extra kitten they couldn’t find a home for and he said his mom was threatening to leave it out on the street, and I couldn’t say no –”

“So we have a cat now?”

“Gi, if you would’ve seen his face, you would’ve said yes, too. That kid has perfected puppy dog eyes to a tee. You can’t say no to him.”

“I feel like being able to say no to students is an important skill you should have as a teacher.”

“I like to think I will acquire it with time. I’m only on year two, give me, like, five years and I’ll be the mean and scary music teacher.”

“You’ll never be mean or scary, Bowen,” Gina sighs, walking toward him with her hand out to scratch the top of the kitten’s head. “Does the kitten have a name?”

“No, she does not,” Ricky says. He watches Gina, watches her smile at the kitten as she burrowes her head into Gina’s hand, and Ricky knows she won her over. “He said they didn’t name any of them so that the families that took them could name them.”

“Does Wildcat like her?”

“I think Wildcat’s scared of her. I haven’t put her on the floor yet because I’m afraid he’ll treat her like that one toy Los got him that moved on its own and throw him around.”

“Does this place even allow two pets?”

“Yep,” Ricky says proudly. “I already texted the landlord. He was just happy it wasn’t two dogs, I think he didn’t want double the barking, but a kitten is fine.”

“Do you even know anything about cats?”

“Not a single thing, no!”

“Ricky…”

“Gina,” he mocks her. “Don’t act like you haven’t fallen in love with this little kitten already. Look at her eyes. You don’t want to leave those eyes to the streets of New York City, do you?”

Gina sighs, looking at Ricky, who gives her his best smile.

“You’re impossible,” she says.

“Say that to the kitten,” Ricky quips. “You love me.”

“Sure,” she takes the kitten from him, setting her on the floor in front of Wildcate, who looks back and forth between the kitten and Gina very skeptically. They watch the kitten walk slowly to Wildcat, pawing at the carrot toy. “What are we naming her?”

“I have no idea.”

“That doesn’t sound like a very good name for a cat,” Gina tsks.

“We could name her Bro,” Ricky says solemnly.

Gina pauses, “Bro?”

“Bro,” Ricky nods.

“I’m sorry, is this our kitten? Or does she belong to you and Carlos?”

“I can invite him over and ask him what he thinks–”

“No, Ricky, we’ve barely been here for five hours.”

“Gina, I haven’t seen him in four days –”

“You two are entirely too codependent.”

“What about The Woman in the Woods?” Ricky says thoughtfully, 

“Susan Fine?”

“That’s the one!”

“You want to name our cat The Woman in the Woods?” Gina’s looking at him like he’s suddenly grown five heads, but the corner of her mouth is quirking upwards where he can tell she’s trying not to laugh. (And Ricky’s still trying to get over her saying our cat.)

“We could call her Susan for short,” Ricky says, shrugging.

“You want to name a kitten The Woman in the Woods, and call her by her nickname, Susan?”

Ricky hums in confirmation, kicking a toy towards said kitten, who is honestly more distracted by Wildcat’s tail.

When Gina laughs, it’s one of the most beautiful sounds Ricky’s ever heard. 

“Okay,” she says between laughter, wrapping her arms around Ricky’s waist and leaning her head on his shoulder.

“Really?”

“Sure,” she says. “Why not?”

“I love you,” Ricky says, peppering kisses all over her face.

“I love you too, dork.”

They stand there for a minute, just watching their dog and new addition roll around on the floor. It’s cheesy, and Ricky feels like he’s in the closing scene of one of the many rom-coms Gina’s forced him to watch, but he feels more content than he ever has in his life. “Look, it’s our little family.”

“In our apartment.”

“Our apartment,” Ricky confirms, putting a finger under her chin and turning her face to him, kissing her softly, her hands finding their way into his hair like a magnet. 

“Okay,” Gina says once she’s pulled away, her hands still in his hair and his arms still around her. “Halloween costumes.”

“Halloween costumes,” Ricky repeats, nodding and moving over to the kitchen counter where the four costumes he grabbed this morning lay. “So, I grabbed our Mario and Peach costumes from when you were sick a couple of years ago because those have never seen the light of day, and I grabbed a ghost for Susan and the t-rex for Wildcat. He’s gonna hate it.”

“I’m not sure if a kitten is gonna love a ghost costume, maybe we should just let her be a kitten this year and torture her with a costume next year?”

“Gina,” Ricky says, putting the other costumes down and holding up the ghost costume. It was more of a white sheet with two holes for ears, a hole for the face, and a hole for the tail – very much meant for a dog, but Susan won’t know that. “She can be the ghost of Susan Fine.”

Gina pauses for a minute, her eyes flickering back and forth between the costume and Ricky. She does the thing again where the corner of her mouth quirks up, and Ricky, once again (seriously, nothing has changed since they were seventeen and sixteen), feels his heart flutter because he made her laugh. “You were so confident that I was going to let you name the cat Susan that you grabbed the ghost costume with the intention of her being the ghost of Susan Fine?”

“Not really. I’m kinda surprised you agreed, to be honest. You’re lucky I told Kourtney that she couldn’t create a costume for her because I think she burst my eardrum when I FaceTimed her about getting a kitten,” Ricky says. He’d sent Kourtney a picture of Susan when he was walking to the new apartment earlier and almost immediately received a FaceTime call.

“So Kourtney knew we were getting a kitten before I did and didn’t tell me?”

“I think she would’ve found a way to put me on a no-fly list if I didn’t tell her immediately,” Ricky says seriously. “Carlos knows, too.”

“Carlos knows everything about you even before you do,” she says, “I’m not even surprised.”

It’s already late-afternoon, so they change into their costumes, Ricky stopping to take a video of himself (between giggles) jumping up and out of the frame to send to Carlos, Jet, and Big Red. He spends five minutes looking for a Super Mario Bros tube sound effect download to put in the video before he sends it. Gina watches him warily from the side, and Ricky can’t stop thinking about how pretty she looks in her pink dress and the little crown that sits perfectly on top of her hair, how the blush on her cheeks matches the dress perfectly, how even she matched her jewelry to the gold on the crown, and maybe he’s just in love with her.

They spend another thirty minutes wrestling Wildcat into a t-rex velcro costume. In hindsight, Ricky thinks he should’ve known he wouldn’t like the costume. He already runs away when it’s time to put his harness on, even though he loves going on walks, and this costume is basically a glorified harness. With tiny t-rex arms. When they finally get it on him, he stands completely still for a full minute, staring at Ricky and Gina with a glare, the two of them stifling their laughter as if it would make him feel better. Ricky snaps a picture of Wildcat the T-Rex and sends it to Carlos, who immediately responds with a long string of hearts and heart-eye emojis, then two minutes later (in which Ricky can only assume he looked very carefully at the picture and their costume choice), sends “WAIT HE LOOKS MISERABLE GET MY GODSON OUT OF THERE!”

Susan, who has spent the last hour sleeping curled into a tiny ball on the air mattress, on the other hand, happily lets them drape the ghost costume onto her, nuzzling into it and going back to sleep afterwards. Gina sends a picture of Ricky holding her to the groupchat they have with all of their friends introducing her as Susan and immediately gets responses from everyone saying they want to meet her and talking about how cute she is. Kourtney texts the two of them separately asking them why the hell they named an innocent kitten after a terrorizing ghost in the woods.

When they’re all ready, Gina sets up her phone on a timer and the four of them pose for pictures together: Wildcat and Susan, Wildcat and Gina, Gina and Ricky, Gina and Ricky holding the key to their apartment, Wildcat and Ricky (“You can send this to Carlos for his new phone wallpaper,” Gina jokes) (Ricky does send it to Carlos), Susan and Ricky, Susan and Gina. Ricky carefully picks out one of the four of them together to send to everyone (there’s really only one where they’re all looking in the general direction of the camera and smiling). There’s another one that’s Ricky’s favorite: Gina’s holding Wildcat and laughing at something Ricky said, looking right at the camera, and Ricky’s slightly turned towards Gina, holding Susan, and he’s pretty sure he’s never seen his own smile so wide in a photo before. He knows he’s happy, he feels it every day when he looks at Gina, when he looks at his friends, when he looks at his students, his classroom, his coworkers, Wildcat, and now Susan. But, to see it in a photo is something different. 

He clicks the little heart at the bottom of the screen and adds it to his favorites, sets it as his wallpaper, and sends it to his parents with a heart and smiley face emoji; presses a kiss to Gina’s cheek because he can.

They spend the rest of the night sitting in the open doorway of their new apartment building, barely moved in and not knowing anyone, waiting for the occasional kid to come up and ask for candy. (Ricky has to explain three separate times that the cat’s name is Susan as well as her costume being the ghost of Susan Fine, which no one seems to get for some reason.) They make small talk with their new neighbors – one of them is a doctor, one of them is a teacher at the high school Ricky’s elementary school kids will end up going to, one of them recognized them from the documentary and demanded a photo.

Between meeting neighbors and coddling Wildcat and Susan, Ricky and Gina sat facing each other, their legs overlapping each other, tossing candy into each other's mouths and kissing a few (a hundred) times. Gina’s mom FaceTimes them and asks for a tour of the apartment, which Ricky narrates beautifully, and Ricky can’t stop thinking about the promise he made Gina at his mom’s wedding a year ago. He wonders how soon is too soon and would she say yes if he proposed right now, in the doorway of their first apartment together that they just got the keys to today, in Mario and Princess Peach costumes, with their dog tearing up a t-rex costume on the floor across the room, with their kitten sound asleep in Gina’s lap, with the blue raspberry Ring Pop that’s sitting in the middle of the candy bucket because the kids that come to their door pick around it.

Ricky knows everything about Gina. Got the notebook paper degree ready to be hung up in their bedroom and everything to prove it. But he has no idea, as they fall asleep in their apartment for the first time, Gina’s head pillowed on his chest and their legs tangled together, Susan curled next to their heads on an actual pillow (ghost costume still on—she refused to take it off, proving their name choice was correct), and Wildcat sprawled at their feet, that Gina’s train of thought is not too far off from his at all.

Because there is so much to take in around this place, in their brand new tiny apartment, but Gina can’t stop looking at Ricky.

The air mattress is kind of shit, and she tries her hardest not to move too much, because every time they do it's loud and creaky and annoying. But she manages to tilt her head up just enough to see him, her idiot high school boyfriend who she has somehow managed to corral into sleeping on the world's worst air mattress in the world's tiniest apartment. 

She tosses the blue raspberry ring pop in the air and catches it before the dog can. 

“Hey, Ricky?”

“Hm?” He hums, seconds away from sleep.

“Do you remember my first Halloween at East High?”

“Course,” he nods, eyes still shut, “It was right after homecoming. We were friends.”

“Yeah,” she says, warm and fuzzy at the feeling. It's been almost eight years since that night in his orange car, and it still doesn’t get any easier to wrap her mind around how they got from there to here. She draws lazy shapes on all the skin of his she can touch, when it used to be an impossible thought to look him in the eyes.

“Are we still friends?”

She bites her lips together to keep from a laugh that would wake the whole room up.

“Is that a trick question?”

“I never got a mug for that,” his voice is so heavy with exhaustion, she knows this is only half Ricky talking, but it's sweet all the same, “So how am I supposed to know?”

“A world’s best friend mug?”

He nods, and their faces are so close together on the mattress she feels the tip of his nose brush her own in the motion. 

“I mean, if that’s what you really want, I can get one in time for Christmas,” her fingers trace circles now up to his shoulder, her voice barely above a whisper, “I was kinda hoping to go in the opposite direction, though.”

“Back to my birthday?” 

“No not back, forward . I meant the friend thing,” she is sure Susan is in on the bit when her paw crinkles the ring pop wrapper at that exact moment, “Different f word than friend.”

Silence stretches between them, and even fighting off sleep, she can see her boyfriend's brow furrow while he tries to solve her riddle.

“World’s greatest feather duster?”

She giggles.

“Nah, that’s wrong, you were such a pretty feather duster,” he says slowly, but with serious conviction, “I could never take that title from you.”

“Think more recently, Beast.”

“Fabric softener,” she sees him take a deep breath in, “Or furniture, we definitely need furniture.”

“I wasn’t planning on getting our future furniture a mug.”

“I thought of another one but Susan is still a baby I can’t say that f word around her.”

“Dork.”

“I can’t figure it out, Gi,” he says, distressed, and she runs a hand over his creased brow.

“It’s okay, you’ll get it eventually,” she hums, “When you do, can I put in a request? Not a huge fan of blue raspberry.”

His rosy lips stretch into a wide smile, but his eyes stay sleepily shut, “I get it now.”

“My brilliant boy,” she kisses the top of his forehead softly. 

“You really want to?”

“How many times are you gonna ask before you believe my answer?”

“As many as I need to stall long enough to afford a real ring now that I spend most of my money on pet costumes.”

“Ring pop is good enough for me.”

“Long as it's not blue raspberry.”

“Susan seems to be a fan,” they’ve got enough toys around the place, more than they’ve got of their own human belongings moved in, but this damn cat loves the shiny candy wrapper, and insists on playing with it by Gina’s head, still in her ghost costume.

“ Fan , another f word.”

“Turn your brain off, Ricky, go to sleep.”

“No, no, I’m totally awake,” he says, totally through a yawn, “It's our first halloween here, gotta stay up.”

“No, you don’t,” she giggles again, as Ricky tries to physically hold his eyelids open.

“God, Gi, what happened to us? We used to be so cool. 4 Halloween parties in a weekend.”

“Stayed up all night in your horrible dorm room bed. Talking, eating candy—”

“Making out.”

“In our defense, we still do that part.”

“When your lame ass boyfriend can keep his eyes open.”

“I am not worried about you filling my kiss quota whenever you feel up to it,” and just because she can, she kisses him softly, quickly.

“Now it's like, 10 pm,” Ricky says through another yawn, “and we’re on an air mattress.”

“Sounds like an upgrade to me.”

“I still gotta stay up,” he nods, eyes fluttering to stay open, “Pretty smart girl told me if I blinked I’d miss her.”

“Couldn’t be that smart because she’s wrong,” she leans in closer, their faces a breath from touching, and whispers, “I’m not going anywhere, Ricky, ever.”

His eyes stay open for a full ten seconds to see her, hear those words, and know how much she meant them.

This was it, for her. And she knows it's true for him too.

“The pretty part is true, though,” is all he says in answer before finally shutting his eyes. Gina watches his chest rise and fall slower and slower, breaths evening out.

She runs her hand up and down his arm, settles it sweetly on his cheek, and whispers, “I love you, Ricky Bowen.”

“Love you more.”

“Now I know you’re tired,” she smiles, “Let me have the more-er tonight.”

“Because I just invented the word more- est .”

“Love you more-est,” she says, even though she knows Ricky’s a blink away from sleep for real this time, and definitely doesn’t hear her. Tries out the word like she’s been trying on life with Ricky for the better part of seven years.

She always thought she’d be better off doing things alone. She thought her family of two, just her and her mom, was the loneliest thing in the world.

Her and Ricky are a little family of two, in their tiny apartment, that's theirs and theirs alone, and she has never felt more surrounded by love. 

Dog curled at her hip, kitten up by her ear, boyfriend under her hand.

(She places the order for ‘worlds greatest family’ mugs the next day, a pretty good f word to have while waiting for Ricky to track down a cherry ring pop.)

Isn’t it crazy, how she once asked Ricky to drive her home from a school dance, and she watched him back out of the driveway to go back to his own? 

And isn’t it crazier, now, that any time she asks him to take her home, he’ll come with her?