Seungri couldn’t open his eyes. His eyelids felt like eighteen-wheelers on his face. To come to think of it, his arms felt pretty weighed down as well. He felt…fuzzy. Like a bad television signal. Seungri thought he could hear voices, but he couldn’t distinguish who or what they were saying. He felt like he should, but he was too weak to care about anything other than just being. Seungri couldn’t remember ever being this exhausted in his life. He wanted to sleep for an eternity. That didn’t sound like a bad idea, actually…

~

     Jiyong started shaking the minute the others left. The Anti-Blinker’s had messed with Seungri’s electronic signals – something that was essential to any Time Jumper. Without the electronic signal they used to pull energy from their surroundings, any one of them could die, no matter who it was. Jiyong himself could die if an Anti-Blinker could get his hands on him long enough to alter or destroy his electronic echo.

     It was something Jiyong knew of, and had hoped he had never had to deal with. He never expected for Seungri to come into contact with an Anti-Blinker before he could teach him how to fight. Well, he expected minimal contact, not a full on encounter where Seungri would actually have to defend himself.  It was never his intention for anyone of his people to be put into this situation, but now his youngest and weakest was fading with every second that passed.

     Jiyong worried on his bottom lip, circling the hospital bed, eyes locked on Seungri. This was going to be a delicate operation, one slip up, just one minor infraction, and Seungri would die. And he wouldn’t just die – he’d vanish completely. Without an electronic signal, one cannot exist anywhere. For being a Blinker as long as he had been, Jiyong knew everyone had an electric signal. Blinkers and the Anti-Blinkers had a high frequency signal, everyone else had relatively low ones, but the point was they all had one.

     Seungri was barely hanging on, supported by the signals emitted by his sinoatrial node and the defibrillator. There was a slight chance Seungri was also feeding off the signals Jiyong was producing, but considering Seungri had barely begun his training, he wouldn’t know how to draw off the energy of those around him. Seungri’s various monitors beeped erratically for a few beats, and Jiyong’s eyes flickered to them. They settled into a quieter rhythm, but Jiyong continued watching them all the same.

     “Keep that heart beating for just a little while,” he muttered, going around the bed and clearing away the machines. He shoved them away, making room around the hospital bed. Once he had done this, he hauled himself onto the bed, throwing one leg over Seungri’s hip and knocking their pelvises together.

     Seungri remained limp under him, as Jiyong expected. Jiyong ran his hands carefully over Seungri’s face, paying special attention to the younger’s cheek bones, the ends of his mandible, and just under his chin. He could feel a gentle pulse – well, it was more of the blood he could sense moving through Seungri’s veins, weakly attempting to keep him alive. He continued to run his hands along Seungri’s neck. He eased off Seungri’s shirt, hiking it up under his armpit, running his hands over the contours of Seungri’s chest and abdomen, feeling for his electrical center, trying to connect to it.

     At some point, he had closed his eyes, focusing on Seungri through his touch. Jiyong slowly matched Seungri’s breathing, and his irregular heartbeat. It didn’t weaken Jiyong any, as he still had his electric signal. Once Jiyong knew they were matched, beat for beat, he started to recharge Seungri. He leaned forward and pressed their foreheads together, listening to the sound of their combined breathing. Slowly, millisecond by millisecond, Jiyong began to change his heartbeat speed. Only a little bit at time, to ensure that the man below him was responding to it.

     Jiyong couldn’t put a number on how long he stayed like that, curled around Seungri, coaxing him back to life. His muscles ached and burned with an intensity and exhaustion wore on him like a cloak, but he declined to stop. He could feel Seungri under him, thrumming with life, but he needed support it maintain it. Seungri gained his heat back first – his body heat had dropped to about seventy degrees Fahrenheit by Jiyong’s estimation. Then came the boy’s color as the heated blood flushed his dying cells with new life. Temporarily out of practice with the process, Seungri turned a rosy hue before it subsided to a light pink.

     Jiyong could feel the temperature change beneath his fingertips. A good sign. Seungri was rejuvenating, slowly. Jiyong felt his strength waning, but he was hardly finished. With a very visible wince, Jiyong fingertips began to burn against Seungri’s hand, carefully placed on the side of his face and on the collarbone of Seungri’s right collarbone. Restarting Seungri’s electric signal wasn’t going to be fun for either one of them. It was going to hurt like a , and they were going to feel it for days afterwards.

     Jiyong groaned, pain coursing through him. He couldn’t explain it – it was like electricity spreading across his skin. No, more like under it. It was painful. It made him want to rub his skin, like it was something he could remove with a quick massage, but he forced himself to keep his hands on Seungri, hissing through his teeth when he needed to release tension.

     After a while, Seungri jerked beneath him, almost dislodging Jiyong. Seungri – or rather Seungri’s body – was responding to the foreign electric signals passing through his system, and it was pretty pissed. Seungri continued to jerk and convulse, and Jiyong had to clinch his knees together in order stay on, like a cowboy would have to