October 2003, icon challenge: write a story about your current default icon on livejournal.com (see below). Nicotine Disdain by C. L. Kamnikar copyright 2003 She started seriously smoking at fifteen, two weeks after the first time she had sex. The cigarettes were better than the junior counselor at camp. But he was an educational opportunity, not a recreational one. Once the mechanics were figured out, it was all very easy, rather enjoyable, and less thrilling than learning how to scuba dive. When the summer was over, he wanted to write, wanted promises he'd see her again next year. Parker made the promises without flinching, and knew that she would never keep them. She smoked a single Marlboro, waiting for the limo to take her home, and made it last until her father arrived. She learned how to drink from her roommate in her dorm, the winter of her freshman year, scientifically: one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor. Found out her limits, her tastes, her range of tolerance for different brands, carefully and thoroughly, without the risk of drugged cocktails or dancing on tables. Kissed and touched and groped the roommate, decided she was straight, not bi, and made no apologies to the girl for not wanting her more than once. She smoked three cigarettes in a row out in the cold the evening after switching rooms, so she wouldn't hear the other girl's crying down the hall from her new suite. She learned how to shoot the spring she graduated, from an instructor at the range who put his hands over hers, showed her how to point, aim, and squeeze the trigger. Told her how to clean the gun, keep it oiled, helped her choose the ammo and make of her .Sig, and drilled her on the basics of how to bring down a live target. In return, she taught him never to assume that yes once meant yes always and gave him a scar to remember her by, as well as the loss of his job. The taste of a dozen Camels obscured the smell of gunpowder on her hands after she left the firing range the last time, and the steadiness of her fingers holding her lighter echoed the confidence she now had in pointing her gun. The first time she shot a man, she made herself wait until after the police cleared her before lighting up, letting the nicotine slide into her bloodstream like a reward. The evening her father transferred her to corporate, she restricted herself to one celebratory coffin nail inhaled on the roof of the Centre, surveying the domain she would someday inherit, letting the smoke curl up to the sky like a banner. The summer she moved back into their old house, she went through a bare handful her first evening on the back porch, watching the twilight fall, deliberately not thinking about her mother. After she gets off the phone with Jarod, she often needs a cigarette. She tries to go without one. It is the only time she feels like an addict, like a junkie, like the nicotine is a crutch, not a badge of control, a blatant statement that she is without fear. Sex and alcohol and violence and power, and Jarod leaves her nothing but a cigarette to fall back on, stripping away everything else that defines her. And then he tells her to quit smoking, he's worried about her health. Those are the times she chain-smokes. *~* The icon in question, made by Perri for me on request:   Back to Random Fandom Fanfic / Back to the Chaos Horizon The Pretender and all associated characters are property of TNT and others, and are used here for entertainment purposes only. Stories are copyright to the author; do not repost or redistribute without author's permission.