A/N: This is my entry for the  Love Song contest! The song I chose is Science and Faith by The Script. Word count is 983.

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"You're doing it again."

"What?"

"That! Cutting me off before I can finish speaking, as if nothing I have to say could possibly be worth listening to."

I hated arguing with Gaby. It gave me that horrible swirling feeling in my stomach; the same one you get during the pause at the top of a rollercoaster when you're dangling over the edge, knowing that in seconds you'll be plunging headfirst towards the faraway ground.

As a rule, then, I avoided arguments like the plague – but the past few weeks, it had been impossible. I couldn't do any right; opening my mouth to speak culminated inevitably in a blazing row.

Take this evening. Gaby had been holed up in the physics lab all day; her second home since term began. With final exams fast approaching, Gaby was set on achieving nothing but the best, spending almost every waking hour cramming her brain with photons and neutron stars and whatever other crazy stuff her degree entailed. I, meanwhile, was already experiencing the sweet taste of freedom – as a final year student, my exams were out of the way.

Gaby loved to point this out whenever I came to visit her in her black hole of study.

"It's alright for you, isn't it?" she'd snap, pushing her mass of unruly curls out of her face as she pored over the scary-looking diagrams in her textbook. "You have all the time in the world to hover around here like a lost puppy; it's not like you have exams starting in three days."

See, this was the issue. In Gaby's mind, my visits served no other purpose than an attempt to distract her. The real reason was to check in on her; the intensity of her work had risen worryingly the past few days. With the teetering stack of empty coffee cups mounting beside her, and little other evidence of any form of sustenance in sight, it would seem my concern was well-placed. Coupled with the bruised purple circles beneath her eyes, I'd finally decided that it was time for her to take a break.

Unfortunately, my visit had been poorly-timed. I'd clearly hit Gaby in the midst of a post-caffeine crash, because the reaction I'd received surpassed anything I'd come to expect, even in her current perpetual state of anxiety.

Suddenly we'd found ourselves hurtling along a one-way track towards self-destruction, before I'd even realised what was happening. As the rational party, it was my responsibility to steer us back towards even ground – but damn, do you know how hard it is to keep a lid on your emotions in the middle of a fight with the person you love the most?

"I can't do this right now," she told me, turning back to her page of equations.

Part of me considered leaving it – but another, far greater part of me refused to leave her alone to work herself into the ground.

"Come on, Gaby," I coaxed, reaching out to gently brush her hand.

Gaby snatched her hand away as if it had been zapped, causing a sharp spike of pain somewhere near my heart.

"God, why don't you listen? How many times do I have to tell you that I can't be distracted right now? I'm beginning to think my mum was right about you."

"Wait, what?"

Her last sentence had been a mutter, spoken almost under her breath – but I couldn't fail to catch it.

"Does your mum not want us to be together?" I asked quietly.

Her silence said everything.

"Gaby..."

My stomach began to swirl with nausea, the world rocking beneath me. It's the stress talking, I told myself – but the dead weight in the pit of my stomach implied it was something more.

"We're too different," she said eventually, running a hand through her jet-black curls so that the silver bracelet on her wrist jangled.

I swallowed, forcing myself to remain calm.

"What do you..."

"You're graduating, for starters," she continued, refusing to meet my gaze. "Come September, you'll be in London – how's that ever going to work? It's not like I'll be able to visit often during term time. Besides, you'll be starting a new job, meeting new people – chances are, you'll meet someone else..."

"Gaby."

I placed my hand beneath her chin, gently tilting her head so that her hazel eyes directly met my own.

"There's no way of knowing what will happen next year," I told her. "All we know is how we feel right now."

Ever the logical thinker, Gaby shook her head.

"Then we're just taking a gamble," she replied.

"Think of it more as a leap of faith."

My gaze travelled towards a poster containing the molecular content of stars taped to the wall.

"Take Galileo, and Newton, and all those other astronomers. When they pointed their telescopes at the sky, there was no guarantee what they might find."

"They'd done all the calculations..." protested Gaby.

"Ah, but until they found what they were looking for, how did they know the calculations were right?"

Gaby fell silent for a moment, considering this.

"Despite all the theorising, they still required faith in their ideas – and it's the same for us. We can speculate all we like about the possible outcomes of our relationship – but without that little bit of faith, it won't ever work."

With Gaby's smile, the tension grinding my insides together slowly dissolved.

I lived for that smile; it was my personal ray of sunshine on the foggiest of days. This was the first glimpse I'd caught of it for weeks – and seeing it now, I knew inexplicably that things were going to be okay.

"I'm ready," she told me, hazel eyes alight with the dazzling brightness of the stars she so loved.

"I'm ready to take a leap of faith with you."