BREAK THE LIMITS: 15/33

[andrew_in_drag]

Title: Break the Limits
Author: andrew_in_drag 
Pairing: Yoshiki x hide
Rating: mature
Warnings: foul language, yaoi, rock 'n roll excess
Genre: AU to bandfic
Note: I first wrote this fic about three (?) years ago, when I was still hallelujah_hide. Oddly enough, I still like it, so I thought I would move it here to my new journal. 
Synopsis: May 1998: Yoshiki Hayashi breaks down in a temple as he tries to take in the news that has changed his life forever - Hideto Matsumoto, the man he has been in love with for seventeen years, is dead. As the other mourners try to comfort him, Yoshiki finds himself falling back through history - to the day when it all began; the day when he met a boy who would, truly, break the limits...

CHAPTER FIFTEEN:

“Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar, you’re gonna go far,

You’re gonna fly high, you’re gonna make it if you try, they’re gonna love you.”

– ‘Have a Cigar’, Pink Floyd

“Yoshiki…” he smiled at first, yawned and stretched as he ripped off his jacket and flung it idly through the open door to the room where we slept, “Where are you off out to?”

His sharp eyes found the note and easily picked out the name on the front. Toshi shot me a questioning glance.

“What’s this?”

I opened and closed my mouth before shrugging, helplessly. It didn’t matter; he was already reading it. It wouldn’t have taken long; it was five words long (KI/OON WANT TO SIGN US) but he took forever, his eyes flickering slowly back and forth before leaping up to rest on my face.

“What the fuck is this?”

I flinched, because he never swore.

“Yoshiki, what the fuck is this?”

I swallowed, pulling on the collar of my jacket where it had folded over.

“We got a phone call,” I told him, “And I was just…”

“You were going to tell me this with a note?” he asked incredulously, jumping ahead of my feeble explanations (what could I have said?). “You are unbelievable. You are un-fucking-believable!”

“Toshi—”

“What was so important that you couldn’t stop for a minute to tell me, the person you started this band with, about…”

He trailed off then, and I knew I was for it. Poor Toshi, the youngest of four children; he’d always wanted to come first with somebody…but that person could never have been me. He flipped the hair that Hide had dyed over his shoulder and glared at me, looking more furious than I’d ever seen him, because he knew full well what had been so crucial to me.

“Hide.”

He let the syllables linger, aggressive in their bluntness, in the air. “I think it’s time you and I had a talk about Hide – who, by the way, I liked when he was several hundred kilometres away!”

“You don’t like him?” I asked, stunned, and Toshi sagged – because even arguing, he was fair, if hot-headed, and he certainly wasn’t a liar.

“I didn’t mean that,” he sighed, “At least…I don’t know, Yoshiki. I like him when we’re not fighting over your attention – if you can call it a fight, when he beats me every time without even trying.”

He gave me a look that verged on despairing. “It’s not fair! You’re the band leader and we were best friends—”

“We’re still best friends,” I replied lamely. Too lamely. My shoulders had fallen; I wasn’t trying. How could I, when I knew every word he said was true?

“No,” he said patiently, “We’re not. It makes me uncomfortable, don’t you see that?” He waved a hand at the dingy white walls of our crummy apartment; flicking his fingers disdainfully at where the plaster crumbled in the corners where the walls met the ceiling, “I don’t feel happy living here, because I know you’d rather that he was your room mate. You look at me and wonder why I can’t be him – and I don’t know why you pay so much attention to some boy who might have cherished you once—” 

“Hey!” I hissed venomously, “What Hide and I have is different, okay. It’s under the surface because we don’t have anything to prove, and just because you don’t see—”

“I see too much!” he snapped, “Because yeah, sometimes he’s ignoring you – and other times he’s staring at you in exactly the same way you’re staring at him, and damned if I’ve ever seen two friends so fascinated with each other!”

“Alright,” I blazed, anger masking my fear – for inside, I was terrified that we’d been found out. My relationship with Hide was flawed, and it was difficult, and it was hot and cold and scant and unsatisfying…but it was ours, and it was all I had of him, and I loved him so much that it took my breath away; left me feeling gutted, suffocated, when I thought of what losing him would do to me.

“Just where,” I bit carefully, “Do you get off making accusations like that?”

“Yoshiki,” he said, so levelly it was infuriating, “We can talk about this – we have to, because…you’re gay, aren’t you?”

I turned to him, feigning impatience.

“What.” It wasn’t a question; more a statement of my bogus incredulity. 

“You heard me,” he told me, but weakly. He didn’t have the conviction to carry this through, I thought wildly, he wouldn’t dare. “I said, you’re…you’re gay.”

“Don’t,” I said slowly, “Be so fucking ridiculous. Don’t you dare make up such bullshit about me, or him, because he was there when my dad committed suicide, and without him I probably would have done the same thing – so that’swhy he’s so special to me: because he was there when my whole world was ripped apart, and don’t you ever fucking forget it.”

With my harsh, stinging words still curdling the air in the room, I left. I took my key and left for Hide’s salon. I didn’t care about what I’d said. I didn’t care, because I’d done what I’d had to.

Love had made me lethal.

I had to put my umbrella up as I jogged to the bus stop. The wet streets glinted in the shy sunlight, and a faint rainbow stood bullied against a gang of black clouds. The sky behind those clouds was as blue as it ever was, but the April showers followed me for the entire bus ride, and continued to hammer against the windows even after I stepped into the glass-fronted salon where Hide worked. A bell rang, signalling my arrival, and he glanced up as if in a dream. He was holding a woman’s hair in with a comb, a pair of scissors held between his adorably pursed lips, but when he saw me he smiled and dropped them.

“Yoshi!” he waved and the woman turned to me. Her eyes lit up.

“Forget the cut I said,” she gushed, “I want his hair.”

I looked Hide from head to toe. The salon wasn’t big enough or flash enough to have a dress code, but it was obvious he worked there; his hair was the most impressive in the place.

“More rain, huh,” he smiled, setting down his scissors. “That’s cool. His hair would look awesome on you.”

I stood confused until I realized he was talking to his client.

“You think so?” she trilled, looking as though he was her personal messiah, and he smiled benevolently.

“Believe me, I would not do a cut if I thought it was gonna look awful. This one lady? Last week? Wanted a perm. Short one. You know those really awesome ones that look all kind of, retro, on the right person? No problem, right? Wrong. She was like me. Kinda heart-shaped face; she had these great cheekbones and that style would have destroyed them.” Hide nodded solemnly. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t put those curls in, no way.”

I grinned, loving the way he lapsed into the gossipy, tell-tale chatter of his clients.

“So what’d you do?” the woman who’d wanted my hair whispered, entranced.

“Hide,” I cut in, “Can I talk to you?”

He must have seen the desperate look I gave him.

“Juro!” he bellowed, leaning back to direct his voice into the staffroom, and it wasn’t a second later that a skinny boy came dashing out.

“Hide?”

“Ju,” Hide said in a pleading voice, “Can you mix some dyes up for me, pretty please?”

“S-sure!” the boy stammered, and I smirked as Hide instantly changed.

“Great! His colour,” he said dismissively, waving at my head even as he pulled me towards the back of the salon.

“Got everyone eating out of your hand, I see,” I said pointedly, and he looked embarrassed.

“I shouldn’t have picked on Juro. He’s new.” He pulled a lock of hair over his shoulders and began running it through his fingers. “So what’s up? You looked like you were gonna wet yourself.”

“Hide!” I gripped his upper arms, “Quit your job here. You don’t need it.”

He took a step back from me, irritation clear on his face.

“Yoshi, I’ve been living on instant noodles all week. Pot, cigarettes and rent all cost money. I can’t live on air…and I can’t smoke it, either.”

“You’ve got money,” I had to laugh, “God, you’ve got money. Hide, Vanishing Vision went Top Twenty. We’re famous. We’re number-fucking-nineteen in the Oricon! Ki/oon want to sign us! Fucking Ki/oon!”

For a moment, he looked absolutely startled.

“Yoshi,” he said weakly, resting himself against the crumbling white-painted wall, “If you’re joking…”

And then he laughed delightedly. “Holy shit!”

“Hide…” I took his hands in mine, “You never have to work another day here. Never have to work another shitty day job ever again. None of us do.”

“Not even Toshi,” Hide dropped in slyly: Toshi was the only one of us without a job. His parents sent him monthly cheques.

Toshi and Hide didn’t get on so well: there was something between them that I couldn’t quite understand…some fundamental lack of trust that left the air between them a little cold. Of course, it could all have been Toshi’s jealousy, and yet—

“You and Toshi—”

I cut myself off. His cheeks were pink with pleasure as my good news caught up with him, and it was so freaking adorable I just wanted to grab him and squeeze.

“Hide,” I said carefully, “If we sign a contract with Ki/oon, then…that’s it. Our lives will change, forever.

“Yeah,” he said breathlessly, “So?”

“So no more naked swimming,” I replied weakly, “For one. And we’d better say goodbye to our apartments now.”

His gaze softened; he gave me a look that was almost knowing, almost loving.

“Why?” he asked, and his voice was different. It was soft, like he was teasing me, and I felt almost as if he was checking me out with the steady slide of his gaze.

“Because,” I recovered, swallowing, “We’re going on tour.”

Impulsively, he leaned forwards and traced his thumb over my lower lip. His eyes danced wickedly, a challenge.

“Okay,” he enunciated, “But I ain’t sharing a room with Toshi.”

And he kissed me, carefully, on the mouth.