BREAK THE LIMITS: 31/33

[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...

THIRTY-ONE:

“Breathe, keep breathing, don’t lose your nerve

Breathe, keep breathing, I can’t do this alone.”

– ‘Exit Music [For a Film]’, Radiohead

The encore barely seemed over, the feel of the piano keys still ingrained in the bones of my fingers, before we were whisked into the neon underworld of the backstage area and I was up against a wall, desperate little fingers curled into my shirt front as the most beautiful person in the world kissed me, fiercely and demandingly, even though he’d looked almost ready to fall down with tiredness.

“Any-anyone could see,” I gasped, and he grinned.

“So?”

My knees went weak and we slid down the wall together until I was sitting, slumped and slouched, and he was straddling me right there on the dressing room floor.

His dressing room. I had initiated this, in some weird way; I’d followed him, and he’d simply dragged me behind the changing screens and…

“I want you,” he stated suddenly. He sat up slightly on his knees, flushed and dark-eyed. “Now. As soon as possible.”

It was ridiculous, but all the breath left my body. He was fixing me with that look he had; intense, sexual, almost aggressive in its blatant seductiveness – it was a look that could have made me do anything: cut off my hands, go crazy, fling myself from the top of a building...

He smiled, and I came alive. I don’t know how else to describe it. For years, we’d been rabbits in each others’ headlights; now, all the lights were out, and the darkness I’d feared was actually freedom.

There wasn’t really a whole lot of difference between a spotlight and a headlamp, after all.

“That is,” he said hesitantly, thrown slightly off by my lack of verbal response – for my body was responding well enough – “That is, if you don’t need more time.”

I turned my smile on him and leaned forwards to warm his eyelids with my kisses.

“More time?”

“It’s a different thing,” he mumbled, “Are you ready?”

How could he ask me that? I’m sure he felt my lips stretch wider against his skin, and my breath as I laughed very, very softly – although it came out almost as a sob; but a happy one, this time, and when I spoke my voice wasn’t entirely mine.

“I’ve been ready for years.”

Once the love I’d had for him had been like a small green shoot, evergreen but unable to blossom, stilted through lack of nourishment.

We rode back to his apartment in a shared cab, holding hands tightly. He was careful of my wrists, fragile from the night’s work within their braces, as I was careful of the thin cuts that cross-hatched their way down his fingers. He’d been playing guitar and slashing his fingers open for so long that the insides and tips of his fingers were whiter and shinier than the palms of his hands: the old scars almost glowed. I smiled and squeezed his hand gently. We had reached that stage in the night where the darkness appears impenetrable, and dawn might never come, and every sound is tinny and unreal: that strange blackness that seems denser than normal air. The other cars rushing by ours could have been a thousand miles away, their noise a distant hum that barely disturbed the heavy atmosphere.

Hide tilted his head towards mine, smiling tiredly, and my heart felt as if it were being squeezed in his hand.

“Happy 1998,” I whispered, and he reached up to brush a single lock of golden-brown hair from my eyes. Unclipping his seatbelt, he slid down to rest his head in my lap, and I placed a protective hand over his ribcage. I could feel his heart beating fast arpeggios under my fingers, and I had to smile at how sleepy he was. The grown up who’d told me he wanted me couldn’t have been further away: he yawned, his eyelids at half-mast as he rubbed them like a child.

“Home soon,” I said comfortingly, and he drew my free hand to his lips.

“I’m so glad we get this New Year,” he mumbled, “Like a fresh start.” He scrambled to take both my hands in his and tilted his head up so we were staring at each other, and he balled our hands together to make one giant fist over his heart.

“I promise you,” he told me, “I’m going to do everything I can to make up for lost time.” He gazed up at me solemnly. “This year will be perfect.” And then he smiled, worming one of my hands free and using the index finger to trace a cross over his chest. “Cross my heart and hope to die. Perfect. I promise.”  

And I smiled down at him, and bent awkwardly to kiss him…and I believed.

When the cab turned into the parking lot of his building, we pooled the cash we were carrying and told the driver to keep the change. Perhaps we bought his silence, because there was never a word in the press about all the things he might have heard that night – and he could have heard plenty.

Wilting, Hide and I helped each other up the stairs. My head felt like a vast and heavy flower on a stem of a neck too weak and thin to support it; I couldn’t remember a time where I’d been more exhausted. In his bedroom, we didn’t even bother to turn the lights on or draw the curtains – bathed in city lights, he ran his hands up my chest to make me shiver, and almost lethargically we undressed each other.

“This feels like a dream,” I whispered dazedly. I was used to touching him even as I was pulling myself away; the thought of having my fill of him, drowning myself in him the way I wanted to, was something that, before, never could have happened in real life. “Are we real?” I asked teasingly, cupping his cheek in my palm, “Are we still living, breathing, living things?”

He pulled me down onto the bed and kissed me, long and deep.

“We’re still flesh and blood,” he told me, his drowsy eyes full of promise, “And after we’ve slept a bit, I’ll prove it to you.”

Those words. The adrenaline still coursing through my body made my dreams patchy and interrupted; Hide was there, and then he wasn’t, and I was running through darkness to be abandoned, centre stage, until Toshi walked out from the shadows and put his arm around my shoulders, and for some reason tears were running down my cheeks…

“Yoshi.”

I started awake, confused. It was still dark, outside and inside, and Hide was nearby. I could sense him; it had been his voice.

“You were laughing, and saying hello and goodbye, and then you were crying. Why is it you dream so much?”

I twisted my head to see him perched upon the windowsill, wearing only one of my shirts and looking so beautiful I could have cried.

“Haven’t you slept?” I asked, my voice a little raspy.

“I have, but I was still too worked up from this evening.” He tilted his head to the side a little. “And then I saw the moon was so big and so full, and I had to come over here and look, and you started to toss and turn…”

I swallowed, the sight of him making my throat dry.

“You look beautiful,” I told him gently. “The moonlight’s etching you out in blue and silver, and I can see the shape of your body through your clothes.”

He smiled and shifted to his feet, padding across the room towards me. Very carefully, he sat next to me on the bed, and pulled my head into his lap. His fingers slid into my hair, playing with it tenderly, and he bent to lavish soft kisses on my forehead.

“This is my first night with you when I don’t have to feel guilty,” he whispered, “I couldn’t waste it sleeping; I just couldn’t. But for a few moments before you got all agitated, you looked so peaceful…so divine. I don’t think I’ve seen you so content for a long time. You looked like you did after…” he ducked his head a little, “Do you remember when we first…? You looked like you did after that. So sleepy and satisfied and…glowing. Like an angel.”

I chuckled at his exaggeration, and placed a light kiss to his thigh.

“Careful,” I warned.

“Of what?”
I sat up straight, kissed him properly, and we lay back down together.

“Don’t make me love you too much,” I said seriously, but ruined it by smiling, because the truth was, he couldn’t make me love him any more than I already did. Now I realized that the stage lights had been like the orangey glow of the streetlamps in the city – bright enough to see by, of course, but only once they went out could I truly appreciate the beauty of the stars.

Money…we had more than enough.

Time…we were still young yet.

And love…we had each other, and that was more than I’d ever dared to hope for.

I fell asleep again that night with him held tight in my arms.

This year will be perfect.

I so wanted to believe.