"Well, it gets even luckier.  Because she's also pretty compatible with Sara.  We might adopt her and her...best friend.  They come as a unit, I guess.  He's a good guy, she'd probably be dead if not for him.  He was taking care of her before I pulled them out of the rubble."

"What's her backlash? Unless it's a secret."

"Um."  He thinks for a moment...she hasn't explicitly given permission to say.  But everyone on the barge knows at this point that she stops crying if she stops touching an esper.  And she's the most expressive person he's ever met in his life.  And there doesn't seem to be a way to conceal one's tendency to burst into ugly-crying wails.  So. "Well.  Mostly it's been crying, so far.  A lot of crying.  Might be more to it than that, but damned if I know what just yet."

"Oh. Crying backlash would dehydrate her in hell week if she couldn't stop crying long enough to get water. Or even just get water while crying. He might've saved her life."

"Yeah.  Someone handed her an esperade, and she offered her hand in marriage.  I have no idea how she slept.  Or how he did, for that matter."

"Maybe she didn't! I basically didn't during mine."

Hm.  Can't stand still, can't fall asleep.  Yikes.  Tim winces a little at the thought.  "Yeah, that would be pretty bad.  I'm glad you made it through okay."

"I, like, eventually passed out from exhaustion, and then woke up after not having slept enough, rinse and repeat, until by day five they decided putting me in an induced coma was less likely to have long-term—what's the word in English—" He opens his commscreen to Google it. "...how do you pronounce this. See-queh-lay? Than the induced coma."

"Sequelae.  Which is why - uh, maybe I was a little unprofessional about it.  But you couldn't sleep and had to be put in a coma, and I passed out my whole Hell Week.  We should have across the room guiding compatibility!  I mean, that's something you only see in stories, but still."  Do you really need to be professional with someone who's - you know what, we're gonna stop that line of thought right there.

"Oh, Lee Tae-gun-sunbae's across-the-room compatible with his current partner. Or so says hyung."

"He is, I, ah, witnessed it. It was kind of crazy."

"Huh. Really?"  Wait.  "Lee...Tae-gun?  The ice esper?"

"Yeah, him."

"Huh.  Cool, I think I've heard of him.  Sorry - I just awakened pretty recently, and there's a lot of espers."  He looks vaguely apologetic for not having memorized every notable esper's name, power, and backlash(if public) by now.  "Good for them being so compatible, that's crazy good luck."

"His partner's powers are pyrokinesis, which doesn't always mean anything but it sure meant a lot this time."

"If hyung and I had had that much compatibility I think I would've taken much less time to realise I wasn't totally straight."

"Yeah, even just the regular stuff is...well, it's intense.  I can't imagine what it'd be like to have a...I don't know, like a blinking light from a cross the room like that.  All like, 'hey!  I'm here!  I'm compatible!'"  He pauses for a second - these two seem to be veterans.  It's hard to guess ages, but frankly anyone with more than four months' experience is his senior in this field.  "Does it ever get a little less...overwhelming?"

"Um... I guess that depends on what you mean by overwhelming? Hyung would know better, I've only had him as a partner."

"My other partners weren't as compatible. I guess you get used to it, though."

"I got, like, conditioned. It doesn't have to be sexual but I sure got an association."

"Hhmmn.  It's just - a lot, sometimes.  And, uh.  I thought you weren't..?"  His hands gesture for a second as he tries to figure out how to be polite about it.  "Er, bi?"  He sure doesn't kiss like he's not into boys.

"I'm," he waves a hand, "like, not really into guys that aren't hyung? But it's hot to tease guys about it and it's hot to have threesomes with him involved."

"Although when it comes down to actual sex involving another guy mostly I let hyung be the one to have sex with him. More like a V than a triangle, you know."

"Ah.  Yeah, okay.  That.  That makes sense."  Okay you need to change the topic or excuse yourself for twenty minutes.  "Have you two been, er, partnered long?"

"About six years now I guess? Bit less?"