Title from "Ae Fond Kiss" by Robert Burns

This was supposed to be a wee fill of a tumblr kiss prompt, and then it just kept growing. Whoops?

Kiss Prompts: "An accidental brush of lips followed by a pause and going back for another, on purpose," "Tentative kisses given in the dark," and "Whispering 'I love you' before a chaste, delicate kiss"

For my Celsius friends:
• 115°F=46°C
• 50°F=10°C

In retrospect, Julie should have known that the trip to the Isle of Skye would be a mistake. But since she's arguably made nothing but mistakes for the past seven months when it comes to Luke, she doesn't really appreciate how much more of a mistake the trip is until it's happening.

Back in September, Julie had known better. Falling for someone during a year abroad can only lead to trouble, and it isn't the purpose of this year. She hadn't even planned to study abroad her sophomore year—the whole point of doing it now is to give her some time away from her competitive Los Angeles music conservatory while she figures out if she wants to perform again. She doesn't come to Scotland to find someone. She comes to take a break from a home that's too filled with memories of her mother, and to alleviate the pressure of needing to take classes for a grade. This year is supposed to be about trying on a new kind of life for nine months, collecting some new experiences, making some new friends, and seeing who Julie is on the other end.

That's the original plan.

And it remains the plan.

It just gets… a wee bit derailed.

Because as soon as her plane lands in Edinburgh and she finds the university shuttle for international students, she meets three juniors from Berklee College in Boston.

And, okay, she doesn't know at the time that the plan has just gotten derailed. Sure, she notices that the guy in the cutoff is unfairly cute, but it's a purely aesthetic observation. It isn't going to matter.

Except that Luke, Alex, and Reggie live in the flat next to hers in student housing, and they quickly adopt her into their friend group. Except that they're the ones who start inviting her to the local pub that hosts a weekly traditional cèilidh dance… accompanied by a band. Except that they're the ones who sit next to Julie in every music class and silently support her as she gets comfortable around music again. Except that they're the ones who she ends up travelling with on weekends, with Luke immediately proving that he has a nose for finding the local music scene wherever they go, whether it's Galway or Seville or Hannover or Brno. Except that Luke, who's trying to reconfigure Sunset Curve's sound after their rhythm guitarist quit, is the first person in almost a year to set sheet music in front of her and ask her opinion.

And finally, on Guy Fawkes Night, when the four of them drunkenly stumble into a karaoke bar (because they really don't understand this holiday or how it's meant to be celebrated), it's Luke who holds the mic out to her with a shy, no-pressure smile and an offer to duet that makes her heart skip several beats… and she takes it from him.

It's meant to be a duet, but Luke apparently forgets to join in when she sings for the first time in over a year. Her heart is already racing from the sheer adrenaline of performing again, and his intense, unwavering focus almost sends her into overdrive. No one's ever stared at her like that before, and—

NO. Don't fall for someone while studying abroad. Especially not someone who lives in Boston, clear on the opposite side of the country.

These feelings aren't about Luke, she tells herself. It's just study abroad—being in a foreign country is overwhelming, and she probably only latches onto this group as much as she does because everything is so unfamiliar and intense. She's so far from everyone she loves and everything she knows, and she's in a constant state of feeling wrongfooted by how things are similar and different. Wrongfooted when something is the same as back home. Wrongfooted when something is different. Wrongfooted when it's simultaneously the same and different, like the day she learns that "frown" has a slightly different definition in Britain. Just close enough for the difference to feel insignificant, but different enough to make her feel like she's staring at her own vocabulary through a funhouse mirror.

Her understanding of the world is constantly shifting under her feet, and the three Sunset Curve boys become a source of stability in the midst of all this unsettling newness. That's probably why she comes to love them so much and so quickly. Her affection for them is disproportionate to how long she's known them, and she has to remember not to let those exaggerated feelings dominate her decision-making.

And yet… Sunset Curve has become her family away from home and Luke has become her best friend on this island and he looks at her like she's something amazing and precious and fierce and—

Don't fall for someone while studying abroad, Flynn reminds her the first time Julie casually shows her a picture of Julie and Luke.

Don't fall for someone while studying abroad, Julie tells herself every single day.

But it doesn't work, especially because Alex and Reggie go home for Christmas, and Julie and Luke don't. For an entire month of winter break, it's just the two of them. Visiting the local Christmas market together, shopping for gifts and food in a dangerously domestic way. Traveling up to the Cairngorms to visit and hand feed the free-ranging reindeer herd. Going to the temporary skating rink in Princes Street Garden, where she clings to Luke as he steers them around the ice and laughs at her for complaining about the cold. ("Such an LA girl. It's not even jacket weather.")

But her favorite parts of the break are the times when they just hang out in each other's flats. Curling up under big piles of blankets and drinking large mugs of Yorkshire Tea and bottles of cheap Tesco cider to substitute for actual heating. Writing songs together and singing and talking about nothing and everything.

They create a ridiculous blended holiday out of the Christmas traditions of the Molinas, the Pattersons, and their various British friends. Their Christmas feast makes no sense. It's too much food and flavors that clash—honey-glazed ham on a plate next to arroz con gandules and Christmas cake topped with Wensleydale cheese.

It's nonsensical. It's a confusing assault to her taste buds. It's the happiest Christmas she's had since her mother died.

Every time Luke smiles at her, or plays something for her on his guitar, or turns his notebook her way and asks for her opinion, her heart skips, and it starts to feel like this disruption to her heart's natural rhythm will be permanent or destructive or something because it's becoming so loud and painful and impossible to ignore.

But she's not sure if they're on the same page. If he feels as dysregulated around her as she feels around him.

Until New Year's Eve Hogmanay. (Look how well assimilated she is!) They tuck in close together on his couch to watch BBC Scotland's countdown on her laptop, and after the cannon at Edinburgh Castle goes off and the crowd starts to sing Auld Lang Syne, Luke turns his head to stare intently at Julie's lips. His breath wafts over her face and, very very slowly, his eyes tug back up to hers. Barely audible over the singing on screen and from the streets, he whispers, "Did you know that LA and Boston are 2,591 miles apart?"

She forcibly breaks their gaze and tucks her head onto his shoulder, giving herself a single moment to enjoy the steady, comforting warmth of his arm under her cheek. "4,169 kilometers."

In spite of how much noise surrounds them, the silence between them manages to be louder. The gross, awful silence of being on the same page. "It sounds closer in miles," he offers.

"But I know how long a mile is. I don't understand what a kilometer is. I'm pretending it's an inch."

It sucks. She wasn't even supposed to be here this year. She was supposed to go abroad her junior year, and they would have completely missed each other. They live on opposite sides of the country, work in different musical genres, are in different stages of their musical journeys… and they just happened to choose this same university. Just happened to want the same year to reassess their relationships to music. Just happened to choose university housing. Just happened to get assigned to the flats on this floor. They were never supposed to meet. It's all random, improbable chance that they did.

And now that random, improbable chance will break her heart.

He wraps his arm around her and rests his head on top of hers. The warmth of him next to her, and the knowledge that they're on the same page makes her want to… she's not sure. Which is the stronger impulse—the one to cry or the one to kiss him? Desperate for a distraction, she begins to quietly sing Auld Lang Syne into the empty flat. A moment later, he joins in, pronouncing the Scots words with an exaggerated US accent that would make her Scottish flatmate wince, but that makes Julie giggle, and the moment passes.

Mostly.

It's hard for the moment to pass entirely, because they're in the same friend group and the same classes and on the same trips, and whenever they need to pair up for things, Alex and Reggie smirk and choose each other, leaving Julie and Luke together. The four of them are basically inseparable, and Luke is always there, casually wrapping an arm around her and sitting too close and smiling too long and knowing her too well. And she's trying so so hard to not put a label on her feelings.

But then it's Burns Night, and they decide to celebrate. Okay, celebrate is a strong word—Julie and Reggie make the haggis, neeps, and tatties (a word that Reggie's incapable of saying without giggling), and Alex pre-selects a list of Robert Burns poems that he deems appropriate for people to read aloud. (It's a short list.) Which leaves Luke with the task of memorizing and delivering the Address to a Haggis.

It's a poem in Scots, many of the words unfamiliar even to Scottish people. During Burns Night, the poem is meant to be delivered directly to a haggis and, midway through, the person performing the address stabs the haggis with a knife.

It is, at its core, at least a wee bit silly.

But it's a performance. And though Julie has never seen Sunset Curve perform live, she knows from videos and from knowing Luke how he is about performances.

Luke doing the Address exceeds her expectations.

The instant he stands up, he tugs a very serious expression onto his face and grabs the bread knife.

"Um, are you sure that's the right knife to—"

Luke ignores Alex, pointing the knife at the haggis on the table as he launches fiercely into the Address. "Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, great chieftain o' the puddin'-race!"

The poem goes on for a while, filled with unfamiliar words that Julie could maybe figure out from context if she were paying any attention. But her mind has completely left the present, solely focused on the way that her heart goes simultaneously wild and soft at the passionate dedication with which Luke approaches the Address to a Haggis. At the way that he's trying so hard to pronounce the Scots words without mocking a Scottish accent. At the way he's getting so into delivering the lines, clearly having googled their meaning so he can properly act them out. At the way he's thrown himself into this with 200% effort, because he's Luke Patterson and he knows no other way.

Fuck.

She loves him.

Don't fall for someone while studying abroad? Too damn late.

So she adjusts it to "don't date someone while studying abroad." As if that'll protect a heart that no longer feels like it's living solely in her chest. A heart that's partly his.

It's fine.

She's fine.

2,591.

2,591 fucking miles.

After their Burns Night supper, they go to a cèilidh at the pub, and Julie stumbles home buzzed and flushed because she and Luke danced together the whole time. It shouldn't have felt romantic—most dances during a cèilidh seem to be about competitively spinning your partner to see who can get the dizziest head and the biggest bruises on their arms. But Luke kept scrunching his nose at her and holding her close, his comforting palm easily finding her waist after months of practice. Fresh off her realization, the whole thing feels very romantic.

Full of soft and warm and loving feelings, Julie drunkenly fumbles open Skype and confesses to Flynn.

Her friend groans. "You know what I'm going to say. You need to avoid those big, beautiful, Boston eyes. You shouldn't be in one-on-one, tension-y situations with him."

"Okay, Ann Perkins!" Julie sings.

"Or you could ask him out."

"2,591." Julie is too drunk to explain, but Flynn figures it out from context.

"Those are the two options. Either get over him or…" She waggles her eyebrows and Julie sticks her tongue out in response.

Julie chooses the third option—wallow in her feelings and do basically nothing to protect herself.

Flynn isn't impressed.

Neither is Julie.

Look, she does try. She makes all these plans to keep her distance and travel by herself. Over the next couple of months, she takes several solo weekend trips, and she finds that she likes traveling by herself. Something inside of her grows and strengths during the alone time, like part of her flourishes from being left completely to her own devices with the promise of a new adventure under her feet. Like she's finally in charge of writing her own story.

It's all very good and important for her healing and growth as an individual, but it does fuck all to protect her heart or change her feelings for Luke.

Because every time she comes back from a trip and gets off the bus at Edinburgh Bus Station, Luke is there, eagerly waiting to greet her. The first time, he tries to play it off like he just happened to be in the area, as if he regularly wanders across town to St Andrew Square at 1 am. But she calls him out with a simple eyebrow raise, and the next time he's waiting with zero excuses. Just a fond smile on his face as he lifts her heavy backpack from her aching, travel-weary shoulders, walks her home, and reheats the dinner he cooked for her earlier.

He's the worst.

So when Luke suggests a trip up to the Isle of Skye at the end of March, during a week when Alex and Reggie have already planned to backpack around Croatia, Julie knows better than to say yes. A whole week on an island without their friends as buffers? Everything about it screams mistake.

She says yes immediately.

(Shut up, Flynn. She's experiencing Scotland. SHE'S DOING STUDY ABROAD RIGHT.)

Still, the gravity of the situation doesn't hit her until it's too late. She has a whole seven-hour bus ride up through the Highlands during which she should be starting to question what's going to happen when they get there. It's not like their journey into isolation is subtle—Edinburgh shrinks into the background, and the towns they drive through get smaller and smaller, increasingly replaced by mountains that get taller and taller the further north they drive. As the hours pass, the other passengers steadily abandon the bus, getting off at earlier destinations. Julie should notice how very alone they've become.

But she doesn't, because Luke keeps brushing against her arm with his bare shoulder. (He's decided that Scottish March counts as cutoff weather again, and gets all smug about "weather back in Boston" whenever she questions it.) As the hours and views wind past, he alternates between eagerly pointing out the beautiful landscapes, workshopping a Sunset Curve song with her, and napping on her shoulder. Hours of proximity to his enthusiasm and his musical respect for her and his physical presence leaves her without the brain space to understand their predicament until the bus dumps them in Sligachan.

Which appears to be less a town and more three buildings facing off against a wide, rugged valley.

Oh. They're… very far from distractions and other people. It's going to be a week of just the two of them.

Huh.

Okay, that's…

No, this is fine. She can handle this. They'll be hiking and tired and distracted by all the views. They're not going to notice how alone they are.

… and then they check into their hostel and get shown to the mixed dorm.

Which is empty.

It makes sense, given that it's not yet tourist season. But there's always been someone else at every hostel they've ever gone to. No matter how seemingly niche the destination, or how off-season their visit, they've never been the only ones before. But right now it's just the two of them, and a room with ten beds, and the front desk clerk pointing at two beds that sit only an armlength apart.

Julie immediately freezes, and Luke must feel the tension in her body because his eyes dart hesitantly to hers for a long moment before he huffs out an awkward chuckle. The clerk looks sharply between them and offers, "No one else has booked until after you're gone, so you can pick different beds if you like. Just let us know."

But the instinctive "No, this is perfect" spills out of Julie's mouth before she can stop herself.

So that's great.

The night doesn't get any less awkward.

Luke cooks spaghetti for them, and they're almost completely silent the entire time. The two of them have had dinner together so many times over the past seven months, and they've always been overflowing with things to talk about. Like they're trying to share a lifetime of conversation in a single evening. But now, with the door to the mixed dorm staring them down from across the kitchen, it's impossible to say anything.

After the most awkward dinner of all time, she gets changed in the bathroom. She lingers in front of the mirror for several minutes, tugging on her baggy sweatshirt and pajama pants, though she's not exactly sure what she's trying to fix about them. Luke has seen her in pajamas before—these exact pajamas, in fact—but it feels very different now. Intimate in a way she's not prepared for.

At least she's not alone in feeling that way. When she gets back to the dorm room, he's wearing a cutoff with his sweatpants. He's never, in all the times they've shared a hostel before, worn a shirt to bed.

He cuts her a tense smile as he crawls under his covers and she shuts off the light and slips into her bed.

This shouldn't feel weird or tense, but it's like there's a thread of possibility strung between them. In the silence and darkness, that thread feels tangible and visible, like it's the biggest thing in the tiny room. All she can think about is how disproportionately intimate it feels to share the room at night. It shouldn't feel intimate—they've slept in the same room countless times before, in dozens of hostels with Alex and Reggie and random strangers. But never alone.

Normally, she sleeps on her side, but she can't bring herself to do it. Turning on her side to face him would feel way too close to sharing a bed with him, and turning away from him would feel like admitting that she's hyperaware of his presence. So she just lies on her back, staring up at the ceiling as if it's hiding a solution.

Luke is silent. Normally he tosses and turns all night, even when he's sleeping. Like every part of him rejects the idea of being still, even when he's theoretically unconscious.

He's awake.

He's awkward.

Why is this so awkward? Why are there going to be 2,591 miles between them in two months? Why did she have to fall for him? Why does he have to live in fucking Boston? Why—

"You wanna stargaze?" he croaks out.

"Sounds good."

Luke snags a tarp he brought for picnics and they stumble outside into an unexpectedly dry night. The sky is weirdly clear for Scotland. (Her flatmate keeps insisting that it's basically summer, because there have been two consecutive days without rain.) As they wander away from the dim lights of the hostel, the crisp dark blue sky swallows them in darkness. Theoretically, Julie knows she's looking out at a wide valley, that the cutting ridge of the Black Cuillin mountains are staring back at her from across the expanse. But the dark is so aggressive that she can't see Luke's face, let alone the view.

In spite of the dry air, the boggy ground around them still retains moisture, because Scottish ground doesn't know how to be dry, so Luke spreads out the tarp. When Julie lies down on it, the ground through the tarp feels cool enough to be unpleasant, but at least the moisture is kept out. And when Luke lies next to her, his bare shoulder warm against her sweatshirt-clad arm, she completely forgets about the cold.

Even though they're much closer than they were inside, it feels less intimate. They're not in a small room by themselves. They're in a valley, and when she looks up at the sky, the space around them feels infinite.

"Holy shit," Luke whispers.

"Holy shit," she agrees.

"I forget how much light pollution there is in a city."

Julie hums agreement. When she first got to Edinburgh, she'd been startled by how dark the night sky was. She was so used to Los Angeles, where the rim of the sky remains tainted with faint purple from the city lights even at the peak of night. The sky back home never becomes truly dark the way it does in Edinburgh.

But this?

Intellectually, she knows that stars don't only exist at the top of the sky. That they extend all around, and that it's just light pollution on the horizon that renders so many stars invisible. But she's never seen them all like this. It's like she's staring at an upside-down bowl of stars, with bright, white lights twinkling all the way down to the tips of the mountains around them.

For a moment, she feels flipped upside down. Like the stars are below her, and if she lifts her shoulder blades off the ground, she'll tumble into the universe.

Her whole body shivers.

"You cold?" he chuckles.

His voice grounds her, and she turns on her side to toss him an amused look. But, even though his face must be only inches away from hers, she can barely see it.

"What are you going to do, give me your sleeveless hoodie for warmth?" she teases.

He huffs out a laugh and slides his arm under her to tug her in closer to him. "Can't handle a little weather, LA?"

"Calm down there, Boston. I'd like to see you tolerate 115 degrees."

"Dry heat? Pft. Easy."

"Yeah? Visit LA when it's 115 degrees. See how easy it is."

"'kay, I will." The swish of air around her cheeks lets her know that he's turned his face towards her. Technically, she can't feel his nose, but she can feel that it's in her space. The proximity, coupled with how immediately he promised to visit, brings her heart to a temporary stop. It could just be banter, but he sounds earnest and quiet. Like he's making a promise that he expects the stars around them will hold him to.

"I don't believe you. I can't picture you in LA." She tries for sass, but she can hear that her voice comes out more seriously than she wanted it to.

His free hand fumbles in the space between them and slides over the back of hers, his rough palm somehow soft against her skin. She freezes, waiting for him to take her hand, but instead his pinky stumbles to hers and curls around it. "Pinky swear," he rasps into the dark.

As she's trying to get her breathing back under control, he releases her hand and the teasing returns to his voice. "And then you're gonna be embarrassed when I slay LA summer."

"When you slay…. staying inside an air-conditioned house?"

"Yeah. I've got epic skills. Totally swoon-worthy. You're gonna lose your shit."

She bursts into giggles. He sounds so sure of himself, as if he's not saying something ridiculous. "What about when I slay Boston winter? Will you swoon for me?" It doesn't count as flirting if she can't see his face.

"There's no way. You don't even own a real coat."

"I own coats!"

"Decorative coats. If you wanna come visit me, we're gonna have to take you shopping first."

"I'll buy my own coat, thank you very much."

He chuckles and she can feel him leaning closer, can feel his breath against her cheek and her skin prickles with awareness. She doesn't quite know where the edges of his body are at the moment, so she's mostly guessing, but it feels like he's just breaths away from her. "Even with a coat, you're not gonna be able to handle real winter."

"You don't know that."

"You think this is cold."

"This is cold." She stumbles her hand up to his face, pressing her cool fingers into his cheek for emphasis.

"It's, like, 50 degrees."

"Exactly, it's 50 degrees. Stop being such a weather snob. Besides…" She walks her fingertips across his cheek to find the rim of his knit cap. "… you're the one wearing a beanie."

"Not cause it's cold. I wear this kinda outfit all the summer."

"What? A cutoff and a beanie?"

"It's a look!"

"No, it's not! It's ridiculous." She tugs on the hat to emphasize her point, pulling him closer. The heat radiating from his nose is close enough to warm her own, and she temporarily loses her breath again. But she won't be derailed from calling him out on this. "You can't wear a cutoff and a beanie at the same time. Two completely different types of weather."

"Maybe this is how everyone in Boston dresses."

"Is it though?"

His voice comes out in an indignant squeak. "Yeah, totally. Standard East Coast fashion. You wouldn't get it."

A stream of giggles soars out of her, sending her body the slightest bit forward, and apparently that tiny motion swallows what remains of the gap between them. His nose brushes against hers and she feels something soft and warm against her lips. It takes her a moment to recognize that it's his lips, and it seems to take him a moment too.

They both freeze.

But even just the small brush has left her mouth tingling and her whole body inching closer on instinct. Her lips fumble back onto his, trying to find him in the dark. She doesn't even get a chance to be nervous, because his free hand immediately cups her jaw, slotting their mouths together more comfortably. The arm under her curls around her back, his hand drifting gently to her hip. The kisses stay chaste, their lips meeting gently and separating and then meeting again. Every single encounter nervous and sweet and tentative. Like they're both silently asking questions they don't have answers to, begging for reassurances they can't give.

When Julie pulls away to take a breath, Luke traces his nose across hers like he can't bear for them to be fully separated.

"Fuck," he whispers.

She blinks her eyes open, desperately trying to read his expression in the dark. "Fuck?"

"I was kinda banking on that sucking."

"… what?"

He huffs out shakily, and slides his nose to rest next to hers, keeping their lips only a breath apart. "I was hoping if we ever did that, it would be bad and that this whole thing between us was just, like, build up. But, uh, that really didn't suck."

Her smile tears at her mouth and she leans back in. She can't see his grin, but she can feel it against her lips, making the kiss ridiculous. Bumping their teeth together, bouncing their lips further off-center. Awkward and fumbling and wonderful. "What about that one?"

He thumbs her cheek, voice hushed and awed as he whispers, "Nah, that one was perfect too."

"Fuck," she whispers back as she catches his lips again.

He mumbles an "mhm" into her mouth, his hand tightening on her hip. "We probably need to talk about this."

She tangles her leg between his, snuggling in tightly against him. "Or we could keep doing this. Maybe the more we do it, the more it'll start to suck."

He chuckles and nuzzles her cheek. "You really think that's gonna be the progression?"

As if to prove his point, he tucks his mouth under her jaw and starts sucking a kiss into her neck. A shaky breath falls from her lips and she uses her leg to tug herself even closer to him. "Probably not."

He trails up and down her neck, leaving a string of damp kisses that catch the cool night air. The kisses get longer, lingering more as his lips pull softly on her skin, and the only thought she's able to have while tucked into the soft, warm cradle of his body is that this feels a bit like being worshiped.

She has no idea how long they lie there like this, his tender nibbles down her neck lulling her into a gentle haze of bliss. But as she stares up at the stars, she dimly recalls that there was something else they were supposed to be doing. What was it?

"We need to… you said we should talk."

He hums disagreement against her skin, and she giggles. "Luke." His smile curls his lips away from her neck for a moment, leaving her mind clear enough to get out, "Unless it's… if it's just a casual thing, I guess we don't need to talk."

Resting his chin on her shoulder, he tucks his head into her hair and mumbles, "It wouldn't be casual for me. I l-like you."

He pronounces the first "l" like a different vowel is trying to follow it, and her heart skips aggressively.

The nervous bob of his Adams apple vibrates against her shoulder, thrumming between them.

Without pause, she shrugs his face out of the crook of her neck, cups his chin, and guides his lips back to hers. She lets a chaste kiss linger there before pulling back to say, "I l-like you too." She pronounces the repeated syllable with purpose, and he unleashes a delighted huff onto her cheek, his hand curling more firmly around her hip.

"Then we'll figure it out." There's no shake in his voice. No question. No uncertainty. As if the only obstacle to their relationship was not being in one, and now that they are… something, nothing can break them apart.

But it can't and won't be that simple, will it?

"We should go back inside," he whispers.

"You tired?"

He runs his thumb down her cheek. "Nah. You're cold. I wanna warm you up." It could sound suggestive, but his tone is impossibly earnest and concerned and… god, she loves him. "And if we stay out here much longer, I'm gonna start quoting lyrics I've written where I compare you to stars and shit, and it's gonna get so sappy."

She finds his forehead in the dark and presses a long kiss to the cool, dry skin. "Like you're not going to do that if we go inside."

He catches her hand in the dark and rests it against his cheek. "Yeah, I actually want your thoughts on the second verse. Maybe we can incorporate some stuff about tonight."

That's the final thing that melts her—the business-like tone his voice takes when he's discussing workshopping a love song he wrote about her.

Yeah, their future won't be simple. But right now, tangled together as galaxies stretch over their heads, it feels like their relationship dwarfs a petty thing like distance. They were never supposed to meet, but here they are. They never should have fallen in love, but they did. What power can a simple logistical problem have in the face of an improbable love story?

She nuzzles his cheek and whispers in his ear, "Bring me inside. Warm me up. And then we'll figure this out. What's 2,591 miles?"

"4,169 kilometers," he replies instantly.

She slowly stumbles onto her numb feet, tugging him up along with her. "I still don't really know how long a kilometer is."

He gathers up the tarp and tangles his hand with hers as they head back toward the hostel. "I think it's basically like an inch, so we should be fine."

"I don't think it's that simple."

The motion sensor light outside the hostel comes on, instantly illuminating Luke's face. She didn't know it was possible for someone to wear a smile that big and bright, and she can feel her own face melt into a matching smile. At the sight of her, his grin grows even bigger and he thumbs her cheek again with a look of awe. "Probably not. But I think we're gonna be fine anyways."

She slides her hands up to his cheeks, cradling his face beneath the stars. "Yeah. So do I."

Luke's POV fic, "Ye Ken Me Foolish Hert," is up now!

References:
• "Neeps and tatties" are turnips (actually swedes) and potatoes
• Robert Burns' "Address to a Haggis"
• Parks and Rec, "Road Trip"