twotwelfths | there is nothing covered up that will not be uncovered, or hidden that will not become known.

LUKE 12:2

It's all stored away in a storage facility at the opposite end of town, it takes an hour to commute there, so he doesn't go. Often. Sometimes, though, when he's got an off day, he'll realize he's missing some book or other he read once and wants to revisit, because - nostalgia, and if that particular itch needs scratching, he'll have to go the distance. It's a show of pure and utter will power, if he doesn't borrow Oliver's car and drive to West L.A. to find it, running through his twenty moving boxes of books, packed carefully in accordance with genre and subject matter which means he can avoid his theology textbooks easily.

It's an even greater show of will power, if he does. Go.

The room he's taken out it small but well-maintained, monthly fee pretty minimal, he's paying the same for his rental and his room combined that he'd pay for any other place near the heart of the city. Working two jobs covers it just fine, especially after he got the Lux gig, right? Pays well. Late hours. A good excuse to sleep in and fuck around the remainder of the time.

When he finally shows up, tapping in his code on the lock, James will walk among all his stored stuff for a while, an armchair there's no room for in the 75 square feet that are his at the Hokusai wave house. Toys and folders full of sheet music, song lyrics and his old trumpet in its case. He hasn't touched it since he moved, but he remembers the fingering chart for Beyond the Sea which he was working on when... things happened.

Only then, after a brief round, will he start digging through his books, looking for that title he'd remembered, a maneuver that has so far brought home Dante's Divine Comedy and two novels by Murakami that are still only half-finished, but never the title in question. Never The Da Vinci Code. Did he throw it out?

If he didn't, maybe he should have. Can be said for most of the things he's got stored away here. He has no use for it, really.

Except when that urge hits, of course, to reread Dan Brown and be 21 again, at those times it's okay to have his old life in storage at the very edge of his current existence, to look at like museum pieces. It's okay, and a little bit painful, but that only ever lasts until he goes clubbing again. The beat of L.A. mutes most of it, and the rest is forgotten as he sucks off a British-sounding guy in some back alley.

Even as he passes by a bookstore on the way home from the gym the next day where they've got Dan Brown on sale, he doesn't buy it. He goes home to his used copy of Norwegian Wood and reads ten more pages of that, mostly disinterested, before leaving it on the floor next to a half-eaten sandwich on a plate and a glass of water. Noah calls for him, then, and for another couple of hours, James forgets he's got a choice.

Seeing as it's stored away on Olympic Boulevard.