BREAK THE LIMITS: 26/33

[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...

PART THREE

FALLING STARS

“Day after day, love turns grey, like the skin of a dying man.

Night after night, we pretend it’s alright

But I have grown older, and you have grown colder,

And nothing is very much fun, anymore…”

- ‘One of My Turns’, Pink Floyd

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX:

“I get on the train and I just stand about, now that I don't think of you

I keep falling over; I keep passing out when I see a face like you.”

– ‘Black Star’, Radiohead

I put down my pen and sighed, long and deep. It was raining outside, in small, quick drops that created an orange-lit mist above the pavements, and the clouds were so thick I couldn’t see any stars at all.

Forever love, forever dream

Stay with me like this…
I sighed again; crossed the words out violently and then rewrote them beneath the scribble.

It was six o’clock in the morning of January the first, 1996. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but the sky was beginning to look a lighter grey-blue in the east. I had stumbled home from a new year’s party – nobody’s spirits had been dampened by the rain, it seemed – at which, for the first time in about a year, Hide had touched me. It had sent tremors straight through me; immediately after he’d let go, I’d wanted to fall over and pass out.

Oh tell me why…

“Another year,” he’d told me wistfully, gripping my shell-shocked hand in his. “I wonder what 1996 will bring.” 

And then he’d whooped animatedly and bounded off to join Heath, our new bassist, where he sat sucking the helium from balloons. Amidst the drunken revelry, I had wondered if I really belonged – people were fawning over me; gatecrashers begged for autographs and hugs, which I obligingly gave before losing myself in the crowds. The problem was, I knew what 1996 would bring: a new album. Great. TV appearances and photo shoots – wonderful.

I cradled my head in my hands, feeling the wrinkle on my forehead that had embedded itself firmly the day Taiji left. I thought of that day so often; the sunglasses that had hid his face when he announced his departure, the flat way he’d said it; the way I’d held Hide later—

He was shaking. We both were. Our hands were trembling as we touched each other, and we didn’t have to say we were sorry – it was all over us. We’d travelled back to the apartment in silence, and undressed each other without a sound. He’d moaned gratefully at the feeling of my finger burning within him, his head falling back helplessly and his hands clawing at the sheets as I’d pushed my dick inside him – and I knew he wanted the dull pain, wanted the roughness. Penance. For both of us. For once, we fucked lifelessly, giving in desperately to the quick and breathy orgasm that faded slowly into a new wave of guilt. Afterwards, I’d held him close, feeling how he quivered like some small, injured animal.

“We have to…” his voice had wavered on the verge of tears, “We can’t do this. We have to end it.”

And I’d nodded helplessly. We’d be able to find another bassist; would be able to find another guitarist? Another singer?

I shook my head and went back to staring at the sky. The way things were going, we would have to find another guitarist anyhow.

It was Hide. He was killing himself.

He’d turned up at the party that evening – hosted by me, on behalf of Extasy Records – two hours after the kick-off, and had burst into the room flying on something considerably stronger than the alcohol that flowed from the party in excess. He’d looked feverish, the glow of his cheeks not entirely natural, and when I’d come across him in the bathroom he’d been splashing water onto his face to cool himself down, even though the night was fairly cool and the hall was air conditioned. His eyes had caught my spellbound stare in the mirror in the ornate marble restroom, and guiltily he’d whipped around.

“Yoshiki…”

I swallowed. I’d spent the years since we broke up wandering through some deep fog: I’d noticed the success we’d enjoyed with Jealousy, but I couldn’t appreciate it. To me, that album had been written about him, just like the last one…and the next one; all that was to come.

“I never did congratulate you,” I said stiffly, “On the success of your album.”

His eyes had softened slightly, and he gave me a sad smile, because that was all we could manage for each other.

“You didn’t thank me for finding Luna Sea for you, either,” he said gently, letting me know he was teasing, and I nodded woodenly.

“I guess not. Your lyrics, they’re—”

“Nothing on yours,” he finished stubbornly, and I shook my head.

“No, I like them.”

He made to say something but closed his mouth and simply nodded. I turned to leave.

“They’re about you,” he mumbled, his voice so quiet I could have reasonably ignored it – I could have even imagined it – except I froze slightly. The struggle between my head and my heart was ferocious: all I wanted to do was turn back around, pick him up and run away with him to a place where nobody could find us.

“Enjoy the party,” was all I said, and left him standing alone.

Sometimes when I looked at him I got the weirdest feeling of jamais vu, as if he’d become somebody completely different to the person he really was.

I was now thirty to Hide’s thirty-one. I hadn’t been around to see him for any of his birthdays; I had smiled grimly and handed him a card and present next time I saw him. When he turned thirty, I’d made my pilgrimage to his apartment, but I hadn’t stayed. I’d simply slipped the card and the slim box containing a rather exquisite platinum necklace (the pendant was of beautifully iridescent mother of pearl, his newest fascination, painstakingly made in the image of one of his very own guitar picks by somebody very talented) through his letterbox. And then I’d hesitated, my forehead pressed against his door – long enough to hear the busy patter of his footsteps and the sound of him industriously opening the envelope – and then the box. I held my breath, closing my eyes at his exclamation of delighted surprise. I heard the uncertainty in his voice; almost imagined I could feel it as he pressed his hand up against the door.

“Are you there?” he breathed.

My hands formed fists against his door, and he did the most ridiculously cute thing: carefully, very slowly and carefully, he slid his dainty little hand through his own letterbox.

Exhaling long and low, I twined our fingers together – and that was alright, because it could have been anyone; any stranger wandering the hallway.

“Thank you,” he whispered, “It’s…it’s beautiful. I love it.”

The next breath I took shuddered in my throat, and I bit down on my lip to stop myself from responding. Slowly, as if any hasty movement would frighten him away, I slid down the length of the door to my knees, where I bent my head forwards to kiss his hand.

When I got outside, of course, it was raining.

That was the way we’d become. We tiptoed around each other, each of us frightened of confessing the love that could ruin us; each avoiding the other as much as possible. We didn’t tempt fate – and besides, every second I spent in his presence just reminded me of what I was missing, because he was there and I couldn’t look at him or touch him…

In a way, it was like I spent that part of my life watching him through a television screen: it looked like the real thing, sounded like the real thing – but when I tried to touch it, tried to get him to respond to me, I got nowhere. Instead, he simply grew more distant.

But I never stopped adoring him.