"Jon..." Vinny implored his friend, feeling a toxic urge swell within him as well, a lust...
A power.
"Jon, stay calm...stay calm, man! Stay with me!" he put his hands on Jon's shoulders, spinning him around to face him, "We're...we're fighting this! T-together."
"L-let GO of me!" Jon groaned in a voice that didn't sound like his own, his eyes blazing. He raised one fist, poised it to strike.
Before Vinny knew what he was doing, he'd grabbed Jon's fist midswing, halting the blow with a strength he didn't know he had.
Or more likely, he HADN'T had it. Until right now.
"You...don't want to do this, man. This...isn't..." he felt another surge pass through him, and let out a long, low, moan, "...you!"
That was it. Whether the act of stopping Jon's punch, or maybe just saying what he said, but now Vinny felt overcome himself.
He pushed forward against Jon, so he was pinning him down on the floor. By now the floor around them in every direction was cracked and shattered. Vinny didn't know where Tyler and the others were, but he found he couldn't bring himself to care.
The world was himself, was Jon, was the intoxicating, beautiful, terrible power building up within them both.
"No...no, not me, not ME!" he begged, feeling the power rising, images beginning to form in his head. Pictures of things he could do, might someday do. Walls caving it, bridges collapsing, fire consuming whole skylines, while he stood in the midst of it, tall, strong, naked, beautiful. A god.
"Gotta remember, gotta re-remember..."
Remember what? The poky little shithole apartment he'd grown up in, abandoned by a worthless Dad, condemning him to babysit a drunk washout of a mother and a bratty little sister who wouldn't know gratitude if it kicked her in the teeth?
What was their to remember there? But here...
Tyler, confident, charming Tyler, always with a plan, Antonio, dependable and reliable, always the voice of reason, the first to come to a guy's aid if he needed help, Brett, who was friends with everyone and would take a bullet for you if you asked, Carl, smart-alec fucker who had an answer to everything and never DIDN'T have a good time.
Mike, who tried his best to fit in, never realizing that they all loved him BECAUSE he didn't fit in. And Jon...Jon who'd always been there for him, always been his hand when times were tough. Jon who had protected him, who had been as good a brother as Vinny had ever asked for.
And he could be with them, forever. Immortal, all-powerful, brothers bound by a bond no one else could ever claim.
If it meant giving up his past, for that, then why shouldn't Vinny accept it? Let it take him?
"Ugh..." a whimper from beneath him forced Vinny to open his eyes, look down at Jon's face, twisted in pain, his eyes seeming to change at intervals from their usual green to a strange, onyx black, "My head... Feels so heavy, so...FULL..."
Vinny knew what he meant. His own head was throbbing, synapses popping and snapping in his brain that he couldn't even understand. Vinny knew what it was, even if he couldn't understand it. Knowledge...of everything that had ever been, of everything that ever was or ever could happen.
It hurt, but Vinny found he no longer cared. He knew what this was, wht he was becoming. Why had he ever tried fighting it? Why had he ever imagined resistance would make him feel better? Why...
"V-Vinny?" Jon's voice, so much softer, vulnerable, "Your...your eyes..."
And Vinny was brought back to earth, to Jon, and a face creased with worry, with fear. He knew what Jon meant about his eyes.
"Y-yours too." he sighed, "I...I don't want to fight it anymore, Jon. I don't think I can. It's...it's too much, I'm afraid it'll kill me if I try."
"T-then we let it in," said Jon, "Together."