Cigarettes and Lightbeams

In Provenance, I still love the Auction-House Break-In Sequence. It's so awesome how Dean and Sam weren't just trained in bowhunting and martial arts as kids, they were also trained in lock-picking and disabling security systems...in forgery and fraud too. I love that dynamic about their childhood - the ease in which they accomplish these tasks as adults.

The whole sequence reminded me of this old friend of mine. He looked like your standard slightly heavyset nerd, would call me "dear" even though I was probably a year older than him. Thick rimmed glasses and studious. He told me over beer one day about his childhood...about how he had to rob houses sometimes to feed his siblings...about how he used to smoke, but only so he could see the lightbeam-tripwires on the high-tech security systems.

Recently, I've read a lot of teen!chester fics that have Dean smoking in them. I found that sort of odd, because anyone who is heavily involved in martial-arts knows that smoking zaps your stamina. I just don't see Dean as someone who would zap his stamina - he always seems focused on being the best he can be in order to protect his family, and smoking would hinder that. But thinking about it today, I would totally love to see a fic where Dean smokes so that he can exhale slowly, illuminating the lightbeam-tripwires of some high-tech security system.