andrew_in_drag | BREAK THE LIMITS: 13/33

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 THIRTEEN:

“Above the planet on a wing and a prayer,

My grubby halo, a vapour trail in the empty air…”

– ‘Learning to Fly’, Pink Floyd

“This is not music; this is…noise, in costume! Give it up!”

1986. For years now we had been walking a maze; just daring to think we were close to the centre before encountering another turn; another dead end. It seemed our dream would remain just that, a dream, whilst the five of us grew poorer and ever less hopeful. I had used my savings to pay for the deposit on my own apartment – and before my money had been given the chance to run out, I’d found a job; a shitty day job, just the type I thought I would never have: waiting tables and washing dishes – still I couldn’t pay the rent, and after a while, Toshi moved in with me, whilst Taiji, Pata and Hide all crowded into Taiji’s place, sleeping three to a room. By dividing the five of us into two apartments, we managed to keep on top of the rent payments, but only just – and it seemed so unfair that no label wanted to risk signing us, because somewhere in that past winter of 1985, we had clicked! It had been the point we’d subconsciously been waiting for: the day when we fused, and the band became my brothers. We shared the same hopes, the same dreams, and worked single-mindedly towards the same goals. Hide and Pata played in perfect synchronicity, as attuned as lovers, so one had only to twitch his fingers on the fret board before the other was playing the same chord without a thought.

And it was just so unfair.

Hide and Toshi taught me guitar, for Toshi had originally wanted to hide his beautiful voice behind six strings, and eagerly I learned – for there wasn’t an instrument out there that I didn’t want to master! – Save for my voice, because all the talent was in my hands and feet, and none of it had spanned to my throat.

That winter in early ’86 was a hungry winter. Recording our songs cost money, rent cost money and food cost money…and that was about the order of our priorities, because never was anything as important as music.

At first, I was shocked to see my own body in the mirror. My ribs were countable; my hipbones began to stick out. Through our aggressive lifestyle of little food and lots of exercise, we lost perhaps a little more weight than men of our young age were supposed to lose. Our figures turned almost girlish, more elegant; our faces lost fat and became daintier, and slightly pale through lack of nourishment. It was those faces that helped us, probably; made us recognizable as that haunted-looking metal band – that and the experiments that Hide did on us, with the new straightening irons and gels and hair dyes. Truly, we looked like nothing I had ever seen before.

Lots of talent scouts simply laughed at us.

Since that night on the roof, Hide and I had barely spoken…we hadn’t needed to. In my youth, I was unsubtle, and although my other bandmates were blind to it, Hide wasn’t. It was all over us…in the soft glances we gave, the gentle touches.

We weren’t lovers, not really. Sometimes I itched to kiss him, wanted it so hard my hands would be reaching out for him before I could stop them – and I had to pause, and pretend I’d been stretching, and ignore the sad look in his eyes. It was a look I didn’t understand, because I didn’t recognize what it was that tortured him – not then, not really.

But we had changed, and as our chemistry altered, so did the band. For all he’d been uncertain before, now Hide fused to X like a limpet to a rock – and I didn’t dare to allow myself wonder why; never had the courage to wonder if he might have loved me. It was all I could do to try and cajole him into affection for me, so that one day, he’d look up, and see the man he’d loved all along.

That was the dream…and I’d do anything to obtain it.

1986 brought what we later nicknamed ‘the calm before the storm’: the tense, slightly tetchy period between January and March, when we had no hope of anything at all…and reflected the dismalness of our situation in our actions. Practises became more regular as we fine-tuned what we had into what we believed were metal masterpieces…and god, how it was worth it, to see the look in Hide’s eyes when I brought in rough drafts of the notes to be played by a piano in ‘Alive’ and ‘Unfinished’ – but it was so short-lived that one success quickly vanquished by a deluge of negativity. Nobody wanted us. Our short contract with Dada Records had expired, and we were exactly as we were before. One step forward, two steps back. That was the year I had to keep looking at the scar on the palm of my hand to remind myself why I loved Hide so much, for he could throw an artistic fit as well as anybody. He was going to be twenty-two that year, and he more than any of us wanted to be goingsomewhere. It was one of the lowest, most depressing periods in the life of early X: and yet, the time when I wrote the song that would save us. We recorded the rough version of it that year – my first song of unrequited love; the song that saved and defined me; the song that dragged X out of the shadows…

All with the help of the most unlikely person of all: my mother.

She hadn’t been around so much. Grief had caught up with her in the past few years, as had the trials of trying to manage my father’s complex business empire. She had lost her sharp edges, and though they weren’t exactly to be mourned, it was sad in a way; she wasn’t the same woman I’d known all my life. She gave in easier, trusted people easier…

In March 1986, she invited me home once again – for dinner, a dinner she’d cooked herself, and when I asked why she looked away.

“Your father,” she said staunchly, “Was a cleverer man than I gave him credit for, Yoshiki; much cleverer. He was sent to the best schools to learn a business education: he made millions from nothing. Everything he touched turned to gold, and he learned all that just to please me, and keep me living in the style to which I was accustomed.” She cleared her throat. “I inherited my own small fortune, of course, but your father came from a less privileged background.”

I sat stunned, for I’d never heard this before.

“You know that he…embezzled, Yoshiki. Well, the business is demanding repayment – with interest – and your father collected a whole host of other debts for me to pay now that he’s dead.”

A tiny bird of panic began to beat its wings against my ribcage.

“So…what does that mean, mother?”

She got up from our grand table and began to pace back and forth fretfully.

“I don’t have his intelligence, Yoshiki, or his ability to make money come from nowhere. Money makes more money – but we have very little now. Look around you – look at this house; this furniture; even the diamonds around my neck. None of this is truly mine anymore, because very soon it is likely to be repossessed.”

Stretching her red-painted lips in a desperate smile, she took my hand in hers. “You’ve got such strong, capable hands. Your father’s hands. Tell me what to do, Yoshiki, please. I know you have your band business, but please, help me.”

I looked at her, considered her, measured her up. She was my mother. She’d stolen years of my life with Hide to send me away; she’d twisted our relationship so neither of us could be sure of each other anymore. But she’d given me Toshi, and the formation of X, and so in that way she’d brought us back together. The damage she’d caused wasn’t completely erased – it was simply glossed over, as if with a coat of varnish to try and hide the cracks and scuffs – but it could be a platform to build from…could be enough, for me.

“Mother,” I said softly, “I have an idea. But you’re going to have to really, really trust me.”

She gave me a look that was half hopeful and half fearful.

“Whatever you say,” she mumbled at last, “I’ll do it. You’re all I have left, Yoshiki. I love you so much, and…I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Mother…” I got to my feet and went to fetch my bag; inside, was the demo of our new song. “Let me play you this. We’ll sell the business – all of it – and it’ll fetch a high price, mother…really high.”

“And with the money?” she whispered, and I took her crimson-nailed hand in mine.

“With the money,” I told her levelly, “I’ll set up my own business. A record company.”

I don’t think I ever could have won her round, if it weren’t for the song. It was a rough version, quite unlike the finished product that would find its way onto our Vanishing Vision LP two years later. It was a song I loved, for someone I loved: a song called Kurenai.

“This isn’t like the noise that came from your room,” she told me wonderingly, “It’s music.”

And she clenched my hand tightly. “It’s music, Yoshiki. And you have a talent, and your band has a talent, for expressing feelings that most people keep secret.” She smiled sadly, “And you must have fallen in love without telling me…to write words like that.”

I met her gaze.

“I’ve been in love for a long time, mother.”

“Then you’ll continue to make music like that. Maybe, you can touch people. Yoshiki, I’ll be honest: I’m scared of doing this. But I have no other choice, and it’s about time I began to believe in you – because you have your father’s mind, but not his weakness. There’s only strength in you, and I don’t know where you get that from. You won’t give in, will you?”

No, I wouldn’t.

I announced the news at practise the next day and, later, I reaped a reward that was almost as great as the success that was to follow: the look in Hide’s eyes, that glowing look that he’d reserved for when we were alone together. He strode towards me intently, illuminated from within, until we were inches apart. He placed his hands briefly on my shoulders, upon my neck; slid those dainty hands up to cup my jaw. He closed his eyes, and then he kissed me.

I could only wrap my arms around him in shock, gasping against his lips as they surrendered to me.

He kissed a path from the side of my mouth to my ear. Whispered, “Thank you.”

BREAK THE LIMITS: 13/33

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