BREAK THE LIMITS: 9/33

[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 TWO

“WE ARE X!”

“For once there was an unknown land, full of strange flowers and subtle perfumes…a land of which it is joy of all joys to dream; a land where all things are perfect…

And poisonous.”

- Velvet Goldmine

CHAPTER NINE:

“Do you remember the day we first met
The time we dreamed the same dream…”

– ‘Without You’, Yoshiki

“If you don’t stop spacing out, Hayashi, I’m gonna shove my bass right up your boarding-school ass!”

Taiji spoke with a slight drawl, like the one Hide had used to have, even though he was an ex-rich kid and an old friend of Toshi’s – Taiji was only really different from us because, when he was seventeen, he’d had the guts to pack a bag with a couple of pairs of jeans and a leather vest, sling his bass guitar over his shoulder and leave his parental home (as well as the riches to be inherited) and start anew in a slightly grimy, dilapidated apartment building that straddled the divide between the good and bad sides of town. I had no idea whether or not the sleepy drawl was something learned or an affectation: there was only one person I’d ever known who had spoken like that naturally, and he’d never replied to a single one of my letters.

I scowled.

It was Taiji who had given us our place to practise. His apartment block was a rundown building that mercifully featured a soundproofed, long-abandoned basement. That was where we practised: underground. Our only audience was the hulking shapes of furniture, covered by sheets that had once been white but were now grey; whenever we moved, we excited miniature storms of dust to swirl around our feet.

“It’s no good,” I said abrasively, trying to excuse my spell of daydreaming, “Pata, you sound great, but we need another guitarist in there. We need a deeper sound. It’s not right.”

Pata’s response was a shy smile from around his beer can. His real name was Tomoaki Ishizuka, but from the first moment he’d been introduced to our fledgling band (just Taiji, Toshi and I after the others had left, hardly a band at all), we’d nicknamed him Pata after Patalliro.

Our luck had ended with Pata. We’d interviewed exactly forty-seven guitarists, inadvertently exposing ourselves to enough obnoxious, indulgent and chronically self-important people to last a lifetime – all of which we had rejected.

Of course, I knew of the perfect guitarist. I just didn’t know where to find him.

A hundred letters or more, I must have written. First daily – sometimes twice daily. At first, I wasn’t discouraged by the lack of response. I made excuses to myself about the postal service and Hide’s poor memory and his busy life, and I loved him so much that I believed – made myself believe, in spite of everything, because he was all I had. I’d bought a calendar which I kept by my bed to mark the days off in thick red ink. I’d had high hopes for my birthday…and then for his birthday; and then I was home for Christmas, and phoning his apartment, and knocking on his door…to no response.

That had hurt.

Christmas day I’d spent alone, in spite of all the commercials hounding me to spend time with my family on this special holiday that my country didn’t believe in. And I transferred all my hopes to New Year’s Eve.

And then I went back to school; came home for spring break; went back again; came home for summer…and then it was September again, and I had spent a full year without hearing a word from him. And I thought I knew why, but I didn’t.

When I graduated, I came home at last, and the first thing I did was knock on his door. The woman who lived where he’d used to pointed out to me the faded patch on the wood; the clinging remnants of the adhesive that had fixed the Matsumotos’ eviction notice to the door, however many months ago.

“You okay, Yoshiki?”

Toshi had his hand on my shoulder and was peering down into my face. Oh, yeah – that Toshi; the one I’d expected to hate. He’d actually turned out to be incredibly down to earth and sympathetic when, at last, I told him about Hide (rewriting his role as my friend, rather than my first love); over the years, Toshi and I had even become friends. Best friends, I guess, although I would always privately give Hide that title. Toshi was sweet in an endearing, boy-next-door type way – the type of guy who wouldn’t hurt a fly and, despite singing for a metal band, preferred to sit quietly and just talk.

I patted the hand he’d placed on my shoulder gently, offering a smile.

“Yeah, sure. Thanks.”

“Only, the guitarist from Yokosuka Saver Tiger is coming over here to jam with us for a bit and—”

I snorted, loudly and ungraciously.

“Saver what?” I asked, one eyebrow cocked sardonically, “Who booked that up?”

“Tiger,” Toshi replied unflinchingly, ignoring my tone, “And Taiji did, I think, because Pata knows the vocalist from a while back but, you know, Pata didn’t want to call, so…”

I let his voice fade out slightly before I jumped, tuning back in.

“…Told him he should have told you, but he must have forgotten. Sorry.” Toshi offered me a lopsided smile. “But we’ve got their demo somewhere around – Pata might have that as well – and they’re not bad, really. And they’ve played a few gigs, and done some recording, which is more than we’ve done, but he said he really wants to play with us. Said he was bored of Saver Tiger anyhow.”

“So how do we know he won’t get bored of us?” I asked distractedly – by now, I was leafing through the calendar we kept upon the rickety ex-picnic table down there, looking for the telltale dash of Taiji’s script – yes, there it was: Sunday the thirteenth of July 1984, a little scribble across the square.  

“They aren’t bad,” Taiji hollered indolently from across the room, “And Pata says the guitarist is something else. And we know he won’t get bored of us, because we’re cool and engaging and interesting and the next big thing in metal, my friend.”

I looked up; Taiji blew me a sarcastic kiss.

“It is true, though,” Pata added after a moment. His hair at that time touched the small of his back, and it was pink. Pink hair. Nobody pulled it off as well as Hide; Pata brought it some charm, however. His voice was slightly glum, the way it always sounded when he was tired or drunk, but he smiled at me hopefully, “I saw them playing Meguro Live Station when I went to visit my aunt. They played this song, Emergency Express. And the people loved it. And the guitarist, he was awesome. He was really something, Yoshiki. I wish you could have seen it.”

“Emergency Express by Yokosuka Saver Tiger,” I mused aloud. “Alright. What time is he coming?”

Of course, no sooner had I said that did I hear a jaunty knock on the basement door – so jaunty it almost knocked the door off its hinges, for the portal was little more than a rusting sheet of metal. Rolling my eyes, I raised somebody’s beer to my mouth and emptied it with a single swig, the way Taiji had taught me.

I was like them now. My rich-boy mannerisms had developed edges; some of my naïveté had been sweated out, lost into heaving, heavy crowds on weekday nights in seedy live houses. A lot of the time, I wondered how Hide would see me now – now I’d grown my hair longer; now I kept it dyed brown and crimped some of it into careful disarray; now I could hold my own in the world.  

And I wondered if he had changed at all. I couldn’t picture it. In my mind, he remained frozen in time; backlit, the way he’d appeared that day, with half his face golden from the sun.

“C’m’in,” I drawled lazily, sounding more like Taiji than Taiji, and pushed some hair back to make room for an extra ego. With hands that were stronger than they had been several months ago, I crushed the beer can and flicked it over to the pile of empties on the table, not even wincing when the ring-pull glanced off my finger. Oh yes, I had changed; changed enough to boss around some guitarist from Yokosuka Saver Tiger, whoever they were, and put him through his paces.

And yet, as the door ground its way open, I seemed to experience it in slow motion. There stood a tallish, skinny, lithe figure, lounging in the doorway with the silhouette of a guitar on his back. He was backlit by the weak light at the top of the basement stairs, but just the way he turned his head made my heart stop, and my hand tightened on the rickety table before me, as if for support. I left fingerprints in the dust, like a crime scene, but they smeared into long lines as I got to my feet.

How could you come back?

How could you leave me?

Hide.