BREAK THE LIMITS: 29/33

[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-NINE:

“I got nicotine stains on my fingers, I got a silver spoon on a chain, 
Got a grand piano to prop up my mortal remains…”

– ‘Nobody Home,’ Pink Floyd

At first I couldn’t believe it.

At first I simply gaped at Toshi’s calmly linked fingers and downcast eyes, willing him to look up and declare it a joke.

I heard the scrape of a chair and a muttered apology as Hide got up and left the room, his face dead white, and I almost went after him until I heard the small, worried whimper come from Toshi’s throat – and I remembered, with a jolt, that he wasn’t the enemy.

I swallowed and gripped the table before me with both hands. Where we sat seemed vastly inappropriate: in our studio, cluttered with guitars and cables and papers and little bits of band mess; we – Pata, Heath, and I sat on two low sofas that put our knees level with the blond wood coffee table. Toshi took a defensive step backwards and his heel landed squarely on a pedal that had escaped from a sound booth; embarrassingly, a bouncy Bossanova drum track filtered, uninvited, through the speakers.

As if this was a personal attack, Toshi spun around.

“But why?” I husked, feeling a little dizzy, and saw my friend shake his head.

“I can’t explain, Yoshiki. For a long time I’ve felt…unfulfilled, do you see that?” he turned and offered me a hopeful, weak little smile, “Come on, Yoshiki…would you ever have predicted this life for me? Fame and money and…” he shook his head. “I feel like I’ve been – kidding myself, really. It’s been like living years out of somebody else’s life, but I’ve got to go back to being me now.” He took a deep breath and met my eyes.

“And besides,” he said quietly, “Can you honestly say that there’s nothing you’d give X up for?”

Something moved between us, lightning fast, and my stomach felt as if it had caved in – because he knew.

And more than that, I realized, my own eyes incredulous as they read the message his were sending me, but he’d known for a long time.

And then, only then did the full force of his words hit me. There’s nothing you’d give X up for?

Because it would be given up. We couldn’t replace him, not our singer, our front man…our friend.

X was over.

I stood up jerkily; my shins knocked against the table. Like two little elves, Pata and Heath were peering up at me, no doubt waiting for my answer. The silence thickened. My mouth opened and closed.

Defend. It was the only thing my mind understood.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I stated coldly, and saw the disappointment in his face. “I…I’m going to go and check on Hide.”

His eyes followed me in the wake of my betrayal, but not accusingly – his gaze felt oddly tender, as if he understood every single motive I had, and might have almost…pitied me.

I found Hide in the restrooms, puffing frantically on a cigarette. He’d cut his hair back in 1996; it reached his shoulders but not much further, and stood up impressively. It was bright pink, the final stage of his many transformations. He looked like he had done when we’d been young, and he’d shone like the sun – and for that reason, although I’d seen this new haircut before, I wanted to cry. He was thirty-two years old, but he still looked as sweet and young as he ever had. He let me push him into a cubicle; let me lock the door behind us and tenderly put my arms around him.

“Toshi knows,” I told him gently, and he drew back with wide eyes.

“That’s why—?”

“No,” I soothed, feeling eerily as though he were some child of mine, and gathered him in close, “No, that’s not why. He’s known for a long time, I think. But he’s…tired.”

I felt him swallow; felt his tears warm my neck.

“I didn’t think I’d feel this way,” he stated hollowly, and I shook my head: I hadn’t, either. Such a strange thing – such an irony, that we’d be sad to see our prison demolished. This should have been the light at the end of the tunnel; this should have been…should have been perfect.

So why couldn’t either of us stop shaking? Why did I feel so…so broken up, inside? As if my world had suffered some fatal earthquake.

“We should get back,” I whispered, reluctantly pulling away. He smiled a little, and I felt myself crease down the middle. He smudged the tears from my cheeks with his thumb. I didn’t even know I’d been crying.

As we walked down the small, boxy, whitewashed corridor that led from the restrooms to the swinging doors of the studio, I took his hand. With another wry little smile, he raised our conjoined fingers to his mouth and kissed my hand, so gently it barely registered on my skin, just behind the knuckles.

Then, he dropped my hand and pushed through the studio doors.

This was the beginning of the end. It was the first time in the history of X that I stood to the side and watched as my bandmates hugged my old friend close. Little, bloodless phrases and words caught my attention; talked it over with management…Tokyo Dome…last live. So I found it in bits and pieces; X, once the only true success in my life, was now a time bomb. When the year rolled round to 1998, X would cease to exist, and all there would be was memories. Dahlia would be the last album we ever recorded, I realized, but Dahlia was only half the story!

And now the story would never end.

Pata’s eyes looked suspiciously shiny; he gave Toshi an embarrassed, one-armed embrace before backing away, ducking into the background. He fixed me with his trademark shy smile, and I felt myself returning it. Heath, the outsider, shuffled a little before Toshi and Hide enveloped him, clinging and pulling him into the inner-circle, where he belonged.

I wondered when Taiji would hear.

And then those beautiful, sad, smiling faces were coming towards me, and I felt myself surrounded by the four people who had become more than my workmates – they were my best friends.

“It’s been good,” I whispered, “Hasn’t it?”

And the answer echoed in rounds, “The best…the best…the best.”

It’s a memory I view both from above and within. From above, I see the ragtag group of five; all men, embracing, some crying and some trying hard not to. From within, I feel their warm breath on my cheeks; their arms around me and their hands on my back; and I feel the small, callused hands of the most beautiful person in the world as they squeeze my fingers tight.

After that warm, close day in April, we pushed our emotions to the side. Everything we did went towards planning our last concert in Tokyo Dome, to be held on our usual day – New Year’s Eve. Whilst its repertoire of baseball games and gigs went on, specialists were planning our lighting; our effects; the size of the stage; the size of the audience. From June they were calling it The Last Live, just like that, capitalized, like some huge important event.

And I guess it was, but I just felt so tired of it all, before it even began. Nothing felt like it had changed; Hide was still distant, and there I was! Planning our yearly appearance at the Tokyo Dome, as usual! I began phoning Toshi at least once a week, and we got everything off our chests – and God, did it feel good to confide in somebody! I found that once I admitted how in love I was, everything else came pouring out; the sex, the late nights and the guilt.

And how we still just couldn’t help ourselves, and how we still were the same: me yawning over the plans for cannons to shoot silver streamers in the air during Kurenai, the first song I ever really wrote for him, and Hide…Hide losing himself, night after night.

But this was the calm before the storm. And it seemed that, as December drew closer, we all began to hold our breath.