That night, after showing Zesper how to shower (which was a nightmare in and of itself), we both got into my bed. I thought yesterday was bad, but tonight was ten times worse. I could hear his words echoing in my ears, and knowing that he was right there was doing nothing for me (actually, the real problem was that it was doing everything for me, if you know what I mean). And I couldn’t exactly, uh, relieve tension, with him right there, so it was torture until I could fall asleep.

It had to be at least midnight by now, and I turned on my side, facing Zesper. It gave me equal parts pleasure and pain to find that he was facing me in his sleep.

I tucked an arm under my head, taking the opportunity to study his face. His eyebrows were a couple of shades darker than his hair, and his eyelashes were the darkest blue of them all. His nose was a little crooked in the middle, and there was a freckle on the tip of it. His mouth was parted slightly, and his lips were full and dark blue. In fact, they looked very kissable-

You’re doing it again.

It’s okay. It’s midnight and no one but me will know these thoughts.

His ears were more pointy than a human’s, but it wasn’t very noticeable. I reached out a hand, letting my fingertips ghost over his face. I gently ran my fingers through the tips of Zesper’s hair.

I froze when he pushed his head against my hand. I thought for a moment he had woken up, but he only shifted closer to me, his breathing still deep. I slowly let out a breath, retracting my hand.

That was close. You need to stop and go to sleep.

I sighed and was about to turn back around when Zesper suddenly pushed up next to me. I breathed in sharply when he cuddled up against my body, his head tucked into my neck.

Oh no. Oh no, oh no.

This is nice. TOO nice. Too nice to resist.

My self-control went on a lunch break, and so with nothing stopping me, I put my arm around him. I curled my body around him, breathing in deeply.

I’ll deal with the consequences tomorrow.

~~~

I woke up to the sight of Zesper’s face right across from mine. I let out a strangled yell as I jerked away from the three eyes that were barely an inch away from me.

“The fuck?!” My voice was raspy from sleep, and my statement came out as more of a croak than a yell.

Zesper backed away from me, looking entirely unconcerned. “Ah, you are awake.”

“Yes, I am! What were you doing?” I sat up, scooting closer against the headboard, trying to ignore the thumping in my chest.

“Looking at your face.” Zesper didn’t seem to realize that I was in the midst of dying and only slid out of my bed unbothered.

“I will take a shower now, is that alright?” Zesper turned to look at me, and his bed head almost caused me to have a heart attack.

I coughed. “Yeah. Right. Of course.”

Zesper sauntered into my bathroom, his tail swinging lightly. I slid down in the bed, holding a hand to my forehead.

I’m going to end up in the hospital at this pace.

I was in the kitchen making an absurd amount of toast when Zesper walked in shirtless, wearing the fluffiest pair of pants I had ever seen.

“Do you need help?”

“Nah. Did Alex get you those?” I gestured towards his pants, which were bright pink and covered in unicorns.

“Ah yes, she said she thought they would look good on me.” He looked down at himself, and I fought the urge to look with him.

I cleared my throat nervously. “They uh, they do.”

I turned around, handing him a stack of toast. “Oh hey, I also wanted to talk to you about something.”

He blinked at me expectantly.

You have to tell him that you can’t get him back to his planet.

I don't want to.

Come on Felix, you’re only delaying the inevitable.

“Well, about going back to your planet…” As soon as I mentioned it, his face seemed to shine. Hope was written across every feature, and I just couldn’t bring myself to erase it.

I changed courses abruptly. “Tell me more about where it’s located.”

“It is in GN-Z11, which is a galaxy. It’s very far away from Earth, almost thirteen point three GLY. Which is about thirty-two billion light-years for you humans.”

Thirty-two billion light-years?

“Zesper, I don’t really understand. I don’t know a lot about space. How long would it take to get there?”

Zesper’s face fell, and he said, “That is the problem. There are 6 trillion miles in a light-year approximately, so the distance we need to go is 6 trillion miles divided by light-year times 4 light-years, or 24 trillion miles. So, this trip would take 1.2 billion hours. There are 24 hours in an Earth day and 365.25 days per year, so essentially, the time it would take is 137 thousand human years. You see now why it is impossible with your current technology to make it back to my planet.”

I had been staring at Zesper open-mouthed, and while I didn’t understand what he was saying at first, I got the last part. 137 thousand years.

He was watching my face sadly, and I realized all too late how telling my reaction was. “I, uh, well. Alex will be here later and we can all brainstorm ideas then.”

It was a lame excuse and I knew it, but I didn’t know what else to tell him. To my alarm, his eyes started filling with tears, and he looked like he was going to cry any second.

I jumped out of my seat and hovered over him, saying, “Hey, look, I promise we’ll figure something out, okay? I’m sure we can think of an idea.”

He sniffed, and tears started running his face, and he pressed his hands against his eyes. “I am-,” sniff, “I am sorry.”

“No no no no no no, hey listen don’t apologize. It’s going to be okay.” I pulled him into a hug, and I let him cry silently on my shoulder, his tail wrapped around his own waist.

I hugged him tightly, forgetting that he was shirtless, forgetting everything except for the fact that he was upset. I kept repeating small promises as I rubbed circles into his back, wishing that I could take away the pain and make everything alright.