BREAK THE LIMITS: 24/33

[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 TWENTY-FOUR:

“With you I’ll continue our private therapy…

And you become my medicine.”

– ‘Genkai Haretsu’, hide

“You have weird taste,” my love remarked to me, examining himself before the mirror and twirling a lock of signature-red hair around his finger. I didn’t answer. I was so happy I could hardly talk. I thought if I opened my mouth, all that joy might spill from my throat like a shining blob of mercury.

He spun around, his nimble fingers purging his hair of extensions until finally he ran his hands through it, satisfied that all that remained was his own; still bright red but smoother and shinier, some untrimmed tendrils hanging down his back.

I should mention that he was completely naked whilst this was going on.

“I’ll have you know I’ve got very, very good taste.”

“I’ve got awful taste,” he teased, and with a spark of excitement I reached out to slap him lightly upon his rear end; an action that quickly turned into a caress.

“Awful taste? When you’ve landed yourself with such a gorgeous, talented, young…”

“Modest…” he smiled, breaking our eye contact in the mirror and turning around to face me properly.

“Patient,” I added.

“On the contrary, we released two albums in the space of one year because of your impatience.” He shook his head, taking my hands in his. “You haven’t written any songs in a while.”

“I’ve been busy.”

He flinched ever so slightly. I faltered, but slid our joined hands around his waist, pretending I hadn’t seen it.

“At least,” he changed the subject cheerfully, “I’m not an older man again for another week.”

I kissed his forehead: it was December 1991, and in a week's time Hide would turn twenty-seven.

He shuddered slightly.

“God, twenty-seven. We’re all getting so fucking old.”

“It’s not old!”

“It’s nearly thirty!” he shook his head darkly. “Twenty-seven isn’t a good year for musicians. Remember Jim Morrison? Twenty-seven – blam. Jimi Hendrix! Twenty-seven, blam. And Brian Jones.”

“Who?”

“My point is…” he lit a cigarette and waved it around his head wildly. “Soon I’ll be twenty-seven. So you better say your fond farewells.”

I slipped the cigarette from between his fingers, took a puff and then propped it in one of the ashtrays we had lying around.

“How fond?” I asked, and he smiled slowly. Sidling up to me, he slid his hands down my bare back and then straight past the waistband of my underwear.

It was like that. We might have been sneaking around behind peoples’ backs; we might have been stealing hours, minutes, even seconds; we might have been living a lie…but it didn’t matter. None of it did, because when we were holding hands on the sofa or curled up together in bed or losing ourselves inside each other, it was better than mere paradise – it was Heaven, take two, this time without the watchful eyes of any boring old God; without any reason to believe it wouldn’t last forever.

It was more than a little scary. Suddenly I had something to live for; I had nightmares in which one of us died and left the other by himself – completely alone! Drifting around, unsupported, on this huge planet!

But the quickest way to ease nightmares like that would be to crawl further into his arms; that or, if he hadn’t come to bed with me, find him and persuade him to tire me out so thoroughly that even dreaming would be too much effort. Not that he really needed much persuading. He wouldn’t go to bed unless he was tired enough to drop; he hated to lie in the darkness so still and quiet, trying not to fidget and wake me up. But I didn’t really care. It was hard to feel unhappy about anything; not when I knew I could simply fling back the covers and pad into the living room of my apartment, and find him sitting with the blue light of the TV reflecting off his face in the dark room. The volume would be low and he’d be leaning forward, legs spread like an adolescent, making it all too easy for me to nestle myself in behind him. Or else between those aforementioned legs.

And anyway, even if I didn’t fall asleep next to him, I’d wake up next to him. Usually.

He’d moved in somewhat unofficially; there was a reasonable amount of his underwear mixed with mine in the washing machine, but his toothbrush was still back at his place. I just thanked the lord we weren’t still sharing; when the five of us had our own apartments, sleeping arrangements were much easier to manipulate. And so manipulate them I did, but – every so often – I’d be unable to. He would’ve gone home to get something or turn the heating off or pick up his mail or a thousand little things, and he just…wouldn’t return. And it was stupid, but I missed him. And I would have followed him, but there were some places he went that I simply couldn’t. Because if somebody is really intent on leaving you behind, then they find ways. God knows, they find ways.

That was how that little time span – the end of 1991; the beginning of 1992 – became the best time of my life. For a whole year, he was mine: maybe not all mine – even I’m not naïve enough to believe that – but at least ninety-five percent. And of course, I’d been his ever since I’d met him, but he had his own ideas about that.

“When we’re on stage,” he’d told me once, after his shrewd eyes had caught my slightly flirtatious wave to a fan, “You belong to the fans. And when we’re in the studio you belong to the band.” Then he’d straddled me on the bed, his dark eyes flashing, and very seriously told me, “But that’s it. The rest of the time, you’re mine.”

And then he’d chuckled, perhaps having identified the exact mixture of shock and joy written all over my face, and very gently he’d placed the tip of his tongue in my ear.

God, I loved him.  

I loved how he’d subtly demand my attention; worming his toes underneath my thigh on the sofa or challenging me with questions about my younger life – because there wasn’t a single thing about me that he didn’t seem to want to know. He was so adorably possessive; on the rare occasions when he fell asleep before me, he would toss and turn and not settle until he had one of my body parts clenched protectively between his; my hand pushed against his stomach or the small of his back; one of my legs locked within both of his; my torso caught between the mattress and the warm weight of his head. I loved the look he gave me when we made love; loved the way all his features would seem to focus with intent and sheer, raw sexuality. I loved the way he could disarm me with a smile; loved the long white line of his throat when he threw his head back in pleasure. I grew to associate his exposed neck with sex; if ever he tipped his head back in indignation (and he did, comically so, as if he was trying to balance some fragile object upon his chin) I was liable to find myself in the most awful predicament of getting stiff whilst he was irritated with me. Such an unhappy twist of fate, that his annoyance would turn me on – or else, it would have been, had he not been so willing to embrace the concept of angry sex. Or at least mildly exasperated sex.

There’re so many things I could talk about. I could mention that he was perfect, because he was; I could spend the rest of my life trying to describe the little snuffling, murmuring noises he made in his sleep.

That was December 1991, just over halfway through the best year of my life.