It takes fifty-six hours to actually realize it because by that time, Johnny's sick of Reed and of needles and Reed's more than ready for Johnny to be out wreaking havoc anywhere so long as it's nowhere near Reed or his lab.

But then Johnny lands on the roof fifty-five hours and fifty-six minutes after the last injection and approximately three minutes later, Johnny's flat on the roof like a deflated beach ball and Reed is naked and engulfed in flames.

"Jesus Christ." Johnny tries to pull himself into line, his limbs piled up like pulled taffy beside him, struggling to sit up as Reed hovers above him, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. "Fuck."

"Language." Reed settles on the rooftop and stares at his hand, watching the flame burn. "Excellent."

"No. Not excellent. Excellent would be you sitting here like this and me bursting into flames and roasting you alive. Give me back my power."

Reed squats down, flames licking at the roof, at Johnny's suit. "Johnny, you agreed. Being able to manipulate our genes in the same way the Surfer did is a huge asset to us in fighting. Victor stood no chance against you when you faced him with all of our powers combined."

"Yeah, well, Victor's dead. You're stretchy guy. It's not my thing." Johnny manages to pull his limbs back into shape and sits up, raking his fingers through his short hair. "I know fire's cool. Everyone wants to play with fire, but it's mine. Give it back."

"We should all learn the aspects of one another's power. This is a huge opportunity for us now that we've gotten to the point where we have mastery of our own."

"I don't want to master your power. The only thing about your power that remotely interests me is something you don't want me doing with your power, so give me my fire back."

"I can do so much with this." Reed stands and starts to walk away, jerking to a sudden stop when Johnny winds an arm around his waist. "Johnny."

"Give me my power back."

"It's just for a short period of time. Testing our boundaries."

"I don't have any boundaries, Reed. Now, I know you think you found a new toy, but I don't want to play. Go fuck with Sue. Go turn invisible and sneak into the girls' locker room or something, but you give me back my flames. NOW."

Reed turns in Johnny's grasp, the fire dancing yellow in his eyes. "No."

"You son of a..." Johnny tightens his grip and pulls Reed closer until they're standing face to face, until he can feel the familiar burn against his skin. "Give it back, Reed."

Reed shakes his head, smoke and fire leaving heat trails. "No."

"Give it back, or I take it."

Reed laughs softly, leaning in to Johnny. "You want to try?"

A jolt hits them both and suddenly their positions are reversed. Reed is naked and sprawled on the ground, his limbs extended, and Johnny is in the air, fully engulfed in flames. He looks down at Reed for a moment and then shakes his head, blasting off into the dark night.

"Can we talk?" Reed doesn't look up from his monitor, doesn't speak, so Johnny moves further into the lab. "Sue says you've been in here for four days. Haven't come out."

"Working."

"Yeah. I can see that." He climbs the stairs and sits in the chair opposite Reed, rolling it slowly back and forth as he watches Reed avoid his gaze. "About the other night."

"I'd rather not."

Johnny nods and sighs, rubbing his hands on his jeans. "You know, I actually went to one of your lectures when I was a student. You were filling in for some other professor who couldn't make it, just happened to be in town or something. Everyone laughed because you wanted to talk about failures."

"I well aware of every thing I've failed at, Johnny, I don't need a reminder."

"You talked about failed experiments. About how failures tell you more than successes. You mentioned something you were working on when you were at MIT, about how you managed to get the result you wanted the first time, and everyone gave you shit about how you kept doing things to see if you would get different results, because it mattered just as much to know what didn't work as what did."

"Is there a point to this? I'm busy."

Johnny rolled his chair over next to Reed's and leaned back, watching the monitor reflected in his eyes. "We are who we are."

"Very deep. Either you've been reading Ziggy again or listening to Ben. Either way, you really shouldn't make a habit of it."

"Think about it, Reed. We all got hit with the same cosmic rays. Whether it was our DNA or something else, even though it was the same rays, we all came away with something different. It...reacted differently to us or we reacted differently to it."

"I'm busy, Johnny."

"Maybe not something in the DNA. Maybe something primal. The R-brain. Look, I'm cocky, I'm hot, I'm hot tempered. I blow up. Sue is the only girl in a world full of men, and sometimes she feels like she doesn't exist. Next to science and discovery, she's invisible. Ben's a rock. He's your best friend, he's the go-to guy. You bend and break rules, learn things. Expand your mind. It's like it knew who we were and made us that. Id given form."

"Freud and Ziggy is a bad combination, Johnny."

"When you took that from me...it's who I am. What I am. Not everything, but enough. And it made you into something you're not. Look how it made me when the Surfer did it. I lost...I lost myself. The four of us together, we balance, so I could do it. But alone..."

"We have powers, Johnny. Beyond those of most men and women. I don't know why, but we do. We were chosen. Or lucky. Unlucky. But people will come after us because of those. They'll try and take them from us somehow. People know what we did, that we found a way to become one. They'll try to take that even more than the power of four individuals. We need to know how we work. I need to know how to control your power, control you, know what you can do against us, before someone else finds out."

"Okay." Johnny reaches over and holds out his hand. "Okay." Reed shakes his hand and smiles then looks back to the computer, his smile fading as Johnny continues. "On one condition."

"What's that?"

"You stay the hell away from Sue when you've got my powers."

"Fair enough."

"And I get an hour alone when I've got yours." He grins at Reed's shocked expression and tilts his head. "Deal?"