BREAK THE LIMITS: 28/33

[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-EIGHT:

“What has become of you? Does anybody else in here feel the way I do?”

– ‘Vera’, Pink Floyd

I was inside him. Every single nerve in my body was smouldering, reaching out for him like the snow reaches up for the heat of your body. My hands were bearing his down into the mattress, our arms pressed together down to the elbows as four sets of fingers – two his and two mine, all callused – gripped at each other with white-knuckle ferocity. His legs were hooked around my back, pulling me closer, as if that was possible. I would probably have bruises later, but I didn’t care. The muscles in my legs felt as though they might start giving off steam, but I didn’t care about that, either, because we were pressed so close, I couldn’t honestly tell where I ended and he began. I was fucking him so hard that we were scooting back along the bedspread, but neither of us cared; the harder I went, the more he responded, his dick pressing demandingly into my belly and his moans getting louder as I pushed, pushed at his boundaries— until I broke the limits, both our limits, together, and he gave a hoarse, gasping cry, arching his back and coming prettily all over my chest.

Silence.

All I could hear was deep breathing, his and mine, and my blood thrumming in my ears. Slowly, stiffly, I pulled out of his spent body, my elbows trembling with the effort of supporting my body. Exhausted, I collapsed next to him, pulling him close to me wordlessly. The night was warm, a real summer night, and the sweat quickly dried on our skins. He tangled his fingers with mine.

“Thanks.”

Sated, I couldn’t help but smile – if a little sadly. He sighed, turning his cheek against my shoulder.

“I remember when we played at Extasy Summit in 1992. The first time with Heath, remember?” he asked quietly, “It was the hottest summer I could remember, and you were so busy being all managerial that you didn’t eat all day. You stood up and passed out right there on the stage.”

“When I woke up the people in the crowd were having conniptions,” I remembered.

“You have no idea how scared I was,” he continued softly. “In the corner of my eye, I saw you fall – I turned around, and you’d fainted straight off the drum riser. You were lying on your side, and I felt my throat close right up. I remember thinking I’d go crazy if anything had happened to you.”

I rolled onto my stomach and propped myself up on my elbows, touched. I curled a lock of his hair around my thumb, smiling gently at the memory.

“When I opened my eyes,” I told him, “the first person I saw was you. And I couldn’t look away. Not then and not ever.”

He shivered against my body.

“Yoshi, what are we doing?” he murmured. “Sometimes I hate you for making me…you know. Every new person I meet, I make lists of all their pros and cons; how they compare to yours. But you always win, because they all have the same flaw.”

“What’s that?” I asked curiously, and he shook his head slowly at the ceiling.

“They’re not you.”

“Hide,” I said softly, “If you think you can move on and find somebody to love, then you shouldn’t think of me—”

He sat up, his cheeks flushed and his eyes flashing with frustration; I rolled onto my side to look up at him, and he pushed me flat onto my back.

“No,” he said savagely, “You’ve ruined me for anyone else, don’t you see that? Nobody else has our history; nobody else would drive out at four in the fucking morning to take my drunken ass home; nobody else…nobody else can just look at me and make me feel like it’s going to be okay! I see you on TV and in record stores, just pictures, and I feel…”

He sighed and moved back, swinging his legs around to perch on the edge of the bed.

Not sure what to do with myself, I pulled the covers over my lap uncertainly. The bed linen was red, the ruby colour of grapefruit flesh; it smelled of fresh laundering and just slightly of sex. Wordlessly, Hide got up and set about needlessly straightening the bedspread; I saw his shape move through the darkness, and then his cool hands were on my skin.

I shook my head slightly; I had felt slightly drunk, as if the ecstasy we’d shared had intoxicated me, but now my head was clearing. He seemed to sense that my mental state was changing; he didn’t cuddle up to me or take my hand, but just let his touch fall from my shoulder.

“We keep doing this,” I stated, carefully emotionless, “Going round in circles. Each time we promise it’s the last time.” I gave a humourless laugh. “I wonder when we’ll mean it.”

“Yoshi—”

“Don’t.”

I sighed, my gaze fixed on the window to keep my eyes from searching for his. I saw city lights; saw the bland, indifferent face of the uncaring moon. “I keep telling myself that X can’t go on forever, and I hate myself for thinking that way. This one thing I thought I wanted more than anything, and it’s turned sour. Like waiting an age for food and then choking on it.”

I saw the silhouette of his face change as he smirked bitterly.

“So tell me it isn’t worth it,” he challenged softly, “Tell me you’d trade it all in for a quiet life. I wouldn’t. I’ve had days where I’ve hated you; days when I’ve been so angry I could scream; days when I couldn’t see the point of even getting out of bed. But I wouldn’t change it, any of it.” I saw him jerk his chin up defiantly. “That audition for X was the best thing that ever happened to me, because it brought me back to you.”

In a film his words might have been more dramatic; the music would have swelled, and I’d have taken him into my arms. In real life, though, his words came out rushed and babbled, the way he spoke when he was nervous or drunk, and I sat awkwardly for a moment before punching the mattress, hard.

“But what have we got out of it?” I asked him stiffly. “We fight and argue and avoid each other as much as possible – and for what, love? So we can be what’s, I don’t know, ironically known as lovers? Because that’s what it is, it’s one big irony. One big mess. And I tell myself that this can’t last forever, and that if I could just hold on…”

I buried my face in my hands, suddenly almost exhausted with despair. I had an eerie sense of the room spinning; I only vaguely felt his hands pulling me back to lie down on the bedspread. Feeling weary enough to drop, I tiredly rolled over to look at him. He’d pulled on my shirt and was standing at the window, beautiful in the moonlight that shone through the thin cloth and showed me the shape of his body. His head was bravely, sweetly upright; he didn’t look a day over sixteen. Tears ran silver down his cheeks to his pointy little chin.

He was so lovely I could hardly look at him.

Love is like placing one person’s heart in another person’s body. If you try to take it out, you’ll cause a fatal wound.

When I woke up the next morning, he was gone, and before I let myself out into the cool dawn air I tidied up a little; put the sheets we’d used into the washer and picked up the clothes we’d flung off, so he could pretend I had never been there. We didn’t talk about it. We put everything into being busy; we wrote new songs and Hide released his new album; we recorded, shot music videos. I looked for a new house in Japan; before I had given the chance to live in it, I took myself away to Los Angeles over the winter and began to look for a property there. Call me flashy, but I was easily capable of making myself believe that what I really wanted was a dramatic, monochrome, palatial Beverly Hills mansion, rather than a cosy and colourful flat shared with the man I loved.

But it was a large enough distance away from Hide’s LA penthouse, and that was the important thing. Separated by miles of traffic, I could fool myself that we weren’t in the same country at all; I had already proved that I couldn’t be trusted around him. A safe distance was best. We knew. I made my excuses as a producer and dithered back and forth between countries; visiting Japan whilst Hide was in America on the pretence that I needed to see the new band I had taken under my wing: Dir en grey, a frustrated five-piece using visual kei as a platform to boost themselves into stardom. They were clever, very clever – and talented, too. Truthfully, they were a band I should have been very excited about in those early months of 1997 – I spent the New Year out in Los Angeles, alone – but I wasn’t, because other things were to happen in 1997.

Because in April, Toshi announced that he wanted to leave the band.