Set Store By
by Raine Wynd
Summary: Written for the Sentinel Thursday LJ challenge #354: store. Home, through Jim's senses.
For Jim, the condos at 852 Prospect were not just a building. They were permeated by impressions, just like the ground-floor shops were, and he knew he cataloged every one every single time he came home, comparing them automatically to his mental file just to see if anything was amiss. There were sixteen condos in total; half of them were like Jim’s, with a second room available to be used as a den or a bedroom; the rest simply had open space. 110 was home to a pediatric ER nurse who worked the graveyard shift; she smiled as he held the lobby door open to let her exit.
As Jim climbed the stairs, he thought about the other residents in the building. 201 and 202 were perpetual rentals, owned by a man who'd moved to Florida the same year Jim had bought his unit. 201 was currently empty, but Blair knew a friend of a friend who was interested. 302 always smelled like White Shoulders perfume -- not overwhelmingly so, though Jim remembered when it once had been, before Jim sneezed once too often in the elevator. The smells and sounds of the building he called home was a familiar synesthesia set on a subconscious level, though Jim remembered when Blair had first taught him such awareness.
As a former covert ops soldier, Jim had thought he'd developed a fairly healthy situational awareness. He'd never quite expected to set store by it in his civilian life – or develop it to the level he now had, thanks to Blair's encouragement. It was one thing to know who your neighbors were, or note that Fran in 202 had just bought a late-model Cavalier, but to be able to smell the fry grease and identify the car as belonging to Fran without ever asking her –- that was something else entirely. Yet something told Jim if he ever stopped being able to know his world without his heightened senses, he'd go crazy. Every little marker of the place he called home was a miasma of things he knew thanks to those senses...and when everything was in place, he felt the stress of his day become just that much lighter.
Now the scent of beeswax and musk combined with the timpani of tribal drums called to him, and he smiled as he unlocked the door of his loft, seeing it in shadows, lit only by candles, the sound of one of Blair's CDs filling the air. Blair sat in full lotus, eyes closed, deep in mediation.
Jim breathed deep and shut the door behind him quietly, still smiling. It was good to be home.