BREAK THE LIMITS: EPILOGUE

[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...

THE LAST PART

“Beyond that barely visible sky, birds heading south

Let's fly once again, cutting down these threads

This time with one's own jet

When that cloud passes—”

“A pink spider flows across the sky…”

- ‘Pink Spider’, hide

EPILOGUE:

“Strobe lights and blown speakers, fireworks and hurricanes

I’m not here, this isn’t happening; I’m not here, I’m not here…”

– ‘How to Disappear Completely’, Radiohead

In the days after he did what he did, I couldn’t cry.

I don’t have an explanation for this. It’s my way to think, just vaguely – anything sharper hurts – that I almost could have predicted it: that lives as twisted as ours were bound to just…split apart. Imagine a couple, any couple, as just a joining – two ropes, say, tied. It’s easy for me to picture it that way, at first, until I get more specific – picture Hide and I – because then a wave of sick, almost righteous anger wells up within me, as I picture our own fraying little knot, the ropes stretched taut under pressure whilst shining scissors snap; cruel, beautiful scissors that cut my soul to shreds as well as music can.

Why was I called? When Hide was found with a towel looped around his neck in a room in his condo in Minato Ward, Tokyo – still, oh god, still alive – they should have called his mother, really. To the world, Hide was my colleague – my ex-colleague, in fact, all things considered. But the call went to me, and when I thought to ask why, the paramedic sounded confused.

“Well, because Mr Matsumoto named you as his next of kin…”

By the time I arrived at the hospital, shaken by how fast I’d driven and the news I’d just received (“critical condition”, was all anyone would say), he was already dead. They told him I was coming, smoothed pink hair back from his pale, pale face, and told him to hang on because I’d be there soon. I don’t know if he heard; he was only half conscious. I got every detail from the nurses, every single one. His eyes were dark and full of tears, half-open but unfocussed; his lips were just slightly open, as if he was about to tell some secret. They hooked him up to the machines; they cut his T-shirt off and did whatever modern medicine does. CPR, I guess, whilst I was running red lights and leaving long streaks of hot rubber around corners.

But I didn’t make it in time. Somewhere between my mad driving and frantic praying, my hands slippery on the wheel with the tears I’d scrubbed from my cheeks…Hide died. Just slipped away.

When I saw him, though, I didn’t cry. I rushed into the hospital room and knew straight away, just from the look of him – because God, he was so still. Stiller than I’d ever seen him. I let out some strangled scream, only it got caught in my throat and came out as a tortured rush of air, and on legs that threatened to collapse I crossed the room in one great movement. His hands in mine were still warm; still those hands I’d known since the age of sixteen.

And at that moment it hit me, and I realized that the pain of what had happened was just…beyond endurance. I knew at that moment that I was dying, too; knew it as well as Hide would have done – but instead I just lay my head on his pillow and took deep breaths, and touched his dead lips and closed his dead eyes because, of all the terrible moments he’d given me, this was the last unbearable thing that I simply could not recover from. I shook with the effort of trying to cry. I sobbed dryly, in deep breaths and choked half-words. Inside me, something cold had gripped me and frozen me over; inside me, it was too cold to snow. And so I just couldn’t cry.

I blamed everyone. I blamed everything I loved. I blamed myself and I blamed Hide and I blamed the music that had been such a vital part of us both – music like an iron rod through our bodies: insufferable to be there; take it out, and you’ll bleed to death. And we never realized that it was something we needed.

Fools.

But maybe…maybe before I could even fathom it, he realized that we couldn’t last. And, to myself – because the world would think I was crazy –, I think that’s why he did it. For the first time he went somewhere I couldn’t follow, and so saved us – before our love could turn sour; before everything started to rot and turn and spoil. He left me where I was, my dream stretching forth like an everlasting burst of sheet lightning against cloudier skies.

So in the end, like dying of an oxygen overdose, the thing that killed us was the very thing we needed most of all. And, if I’m honest, I think this was always at the back of my mind.

The truth is, I always knew that I was only borrowing him.

And, God, who could ever understand him? —That pink-haired boy who stole my heart at the age of sixteen; stole it, and kept it – and now, had handed it back so it could be put to use.

He was unique, truly the first of his kind – and whilst his soul resides in the stars, and the clouds that flow across the skies, I know deep down that my own self belongs here, in the ground and in the water; in the flesh and the blood: and, of course, on the wings of beautiful music. So we wrote our parts, Hide and I. And the earth just can’t marry with the heavens. But these days, whenever I get sad, I just swallow my wine in one go and set the empty glass down on the lid of the piano. Then, I spend a moment just to summon him up; his memory – so that when I open my eyes again, I’m met with his beaming, encouraging, loving face.

He tells me that somewhere, he’s waiting for me. And just for a moment, my heart twists right around.

And then, I begin to play.

I’m older now than he ever got to be, middle-aged and alone in my huge house – alone but for that presence of him that haunts certain rooms, every now and again: like when I see a flash of pink go past the bathroom mirror, or a loose spider shape dripping in the condensation on a window, or the light sound of his breathing when I first wake up. All a trick of the light, a coincidence, or my own imagination, because I want so desperately to wake up and feel his hands in mine again. Over the day, I heal. Waking up in the morning, I remember, and the scab tears off to freshly reveal the huge, hollow space in my chest. 

Back in the years of X, Hide discovered that alcohol and sleeping pills would get him back to my arms – that cheap sex and drug trips would help him get back where he belonged; and though this wasn’t right, I can’t help but admit to doing something similar. Even now I turn inward, stunted, like an animal in a trap chewing its own leg off; trying mightily to find my way back to where I was – sobbing and shaking and breaking things. Drinking, falling over and passing out, if I think of him.

But still, no matter how many recoveries and relapses I go through; no matter how many songs I make or how many smiles I fake…there will be a time when that music, that life force, will run out for me. And I know where I’ll go then.

Because the saddest thing is, he was music for me – and he never even realized it. And for me, our rains haven’t fallen since the day they sent him up in smoke.

So on the day I die, you’ll see me pounding the pavements; going back to that old apartment block of Taiji’s where the whole thing started up again – Hide, X, music, love, everything. You’ll see me go in, and enter the stairwell…

On my way to where I’ll feel the warm rains of our love, falling for all eternity.

On my way to the roof.

On my way to where I’ll find my Hide, again…

THE END

Comments

[jrock-miso.livejournal.com]

Omg DON'T read this listening to X or hide

So sad so so so touching

[juuu-chan.livejournal.com]

this might be one of the best stories I've ever read...
It made me cry all the way through...
Because everything fits, and the whole story I saw his death coming closer, and then, when yoshi said, this will be our best year, I cried, cause I knew what was to come...

[velvet-liquor.livejournal.com]

I have spent a few days reading that,and I have to leave a comment (of course I have to!).
Reading this had been a pleasure. I loved how this could be considered like a biography of sorts, as if it were the true story. This felt real, and oh so heart wrenching to read, because of course, from the very beginning, we know what happens to hide in the end, and Yoshiki's love seems to know no limit. To see that Yoshiki loved only him, lived for him, was at the same time beautiful and sad. No one could ever hope to take hide's place, no one could fulfill that gaping hole inside him...
And I have to say, this is a real love story, where love burns and consumes everything, where it drives people crazy, can bring them down mercilessly, but also bring so much happiness to them, like they could fly... Before they crash and burn...

All along, hide was hard to understand, but oh so easy to get at the same time.. Like he wants something not even he can understand, but he was also afraid of things I still don't get. Love drove him mad and led him to his end, I guess...

And what I absolutely loved, was when hide told Yoshiki why he drank like that, just to make sure Yoshiki took him home and took care of him, to be closer... And this was so heartbreaking because in the end, Yoshiki couldn't be there...

A beautiful piece <3 and though your writing style did change a bit since then (for the better, since I absolutely love your actual writing style), it was still good to read. Very good.

Thank you for sharing <3