I am the cigarette smoking man- say once an hour I light the flower and burn, baby burn.

My great quest for good GenX fic has yielded very little; I'll do another recs post soon, but in the meantime, I'll probably just read "Perseus, Still" and "Absolute Beginners" again for the six millionth time, and try not to absorb JaneTe's fairly distinctive voice in my own writing.

Jono and Ange have difficult voices to capture; they've both got a huge vocabulary of slang, and slang is finicky to work with when it's not your native dialect. That said, my Jono is totally a die hard Neil Gaiman fan, and he and Angelo totally argue about comics almost as often as they argue about music, which is all the time. (What? No, I'm not actually writing a longer-than-drabble-length fic. Shut up. I'm not.)

Also, the Great Lakes Avengers are a real team...sort of. They're even more ridiculous than their name implies.

No warnings, just a vaguely out of character Angelo, because he doesn't actually know how to feel sorry for himself. (But, in conclusion? I love Angelo so much, and I hate Marvel, just a little, because of it.)

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"What kind of super hero team would want me, anyway? "Sorry, Senor Espinosa, we already have our share of mutants with useless powers." Face it, amigo. All I'm good for is scaring the kiddies at Halloween." Angelo paces the basement restlessly, halfway through his second pack of cigarettes for the day. It's become second nature for him to step over or around the piles of clothing and CD cases that litter the floor.

*The Great Lakes Avengers'd prolly take you. An' yer power's not useless.* Jono is lying on the couch, rereading one of his old issues of Sandman and listening to Angelo monologue around his room with half an ear. *Thought you were only in this 'til you graduated, anyway.*

"That ain't the point. If I wanted to keep doing this shit, no one'd take me. And- what the fuck, 'mano? The Great Lakes Avengers? How desperate do you think I am?" He picks up an empty soda can (one of his) off the floor to use as an ash tray. "Don't matter anyway, they already got a stretchy guy."

Jono flips a page in his comic book and doesn't look up. *Keep feelin' sorry for yerself, mate. It's sexy.*

Angelo stops and drapes himself over the back of the couch, in Jono's face. "You'd be the expert on that, right, muchacho? 'Cuz you're the one with the aura of mystery and self loathing. Izzat why Paige still wants to jump your bones?"

Even though he can communicate perfectly well through telepathy, there are times when Jono can say everything he needs to with his eyes alone. The look he gives Angelo now says, quite clearly, "Keep talking and I'll rip your bloody face off with my psychic teeth, you plonker."

Angelo just grins and ruffles Jono's hair, then lights another cigarette and begins pacing again.