Except I don't really want them to fall in love, agency is involved through and through, they will love because they see the wonder in each other and the entity they meet, they will love because they choose to, and they'll make something beautiful with each other because they wanted nothing more than to do so.
And this isn't to say my studying fungi will lead to a particularly accurate or robust representation of fungi, this takes place in a universe with wacky silly science. But the POV character is an astromycologist so I gotta get in her mindset