BREAK THE LIMITS: 14/33

[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 FOURTEEN:

“I don’t wanna be your friend, I just wanna be your lover

No matter how it ends, no matter how it starts.”

– ‘House of Cards’, Radiohead

Since 1982, Toshi and I had been working together in pursuit of this dream…and now it had been realized. Signed under my label, Extasy Records, we had taken less than twenty days to release what we ruthlessly christened our “first proper single”,Orgasm. We bypassed the release of I’ll Kill You completely, believing it to have failed us by not gaining the success we’d wanted – and yet, I felt sad: not because the single hadn’t taken off, but because of the way we chose to write over history entirely. I felt as if the band that had produced I’ll Kill You had somehow passed out of existence. It was a feeling very close to grief.

Orgasm never went far. It was too weird, too rude, and although we all felt smug at, as hide put it, “infecting the populace with our smut”, we paid the price. Orgasm never made the Oricon charts, but it was important – our starting point, our platform.Orgasm was like the blocks that sprinters use, ready to launch themselves off when they hear the starting gun…

It also contained X as a b-side. Now, there was a song to last. When I think of X, I think of the Last Live; I think of the cathartic feeling of hammering out the same rhythm that I’d been playing since 1986…my pathetic way of pretending nothing had changed.

Band morale was sky-high as we began work on our first big project: a full length LP, dubbed with a working title of Vanishing Vision. We pulled together old demos and reworked them until they were as close to perfect as we could manage; we scoured our history for songs that showed potential…and we blew off the dust. With the funds that Extasy Records still had, and the limited profits made from sales of Orgasm, we could afford to rent a studio in a slightly better part of Tokyo, and purge our young skins forever from the old, aging smells of dust and rot. In some way, coming out of the basement had been one huge, metaphorical step: for there we were, in the sunshine, on our way.

July, August and September, 1987. We worked – that was all we did. That summer was muggy and stifling, made even worse by the inner-city congestion. On warm days, there was never a cloud in the sky to provide moments of shade; we wilted in our sun-drenched studio, dreaming of the summer thunderstorms that rumbled regularly through the skies, and washed away the humidity with cool rains – if only for a few hours.

“Fuck,” Taiji announced disbelievingly, “I’d sell my fucking soul for some air-con.”

He slouched on the floor, shirtless, wearily fanning himself with a sheet of paper. We all traded sympathetic glances, and I’m ashamed to say that my gaze lingered the longest on Hide. Stubborn as ever, he had dressed in his usual ‘band’ clothes that day, but had excused himself around mid-afternoon for what had been his longest bathroom break ever – but just when we’d begun sliding suspicious gazes at each other, he’d re-appeared, breathless, throwing his leather pants disdainfully into a corner and laughing that it had taken him a full fifteen minutes to pull them off his body. He stood in only a T-shirt and boxers, his impressive hair tied up to tempt a non-existent breeze into landing on the back of his neck, and he looked adorably flustered and uncomfortable.

“You know what I’m gonna do this evening?” he mused, “I’m gonna wait until darkness falls completely, and I’m gonna hire a boat at the bay and row out until the people on land can’t see. Then I’m gonna take off all my clothes, and go night-swimming in the sea.”

“Hide!” I burst, laughing, shocked, “Naked?!”

“Hell, yeah!” he heralded, “What, you’ve never done it? Swum naked? It’s the best. And the sea will be warm because the sun’s been on it all day…and the sun doesn’t stop...it’ll be heaven.”

Seeing the scandalised look on my face, he raised a teasing eyebrow. “Wanna come?”

I recognized the challenge: the limits to be broken. Small ones, these. We’d taken the biggest hurdle years ago.

“It’s meant to be stormy again this evening,” Toshi stated sensibly, “I’m not sure if—”

“Sure, I’ll come,” I announced, “Unless you’re—”

“No,” Hide cut me off, looking at me strangely, “I’m not. Just don’t go pretending I’m a chick.”

Feeling somehow rebuffed, I turned back to the sheet of music I had been concentrating on. I could feel Toshi’s eyes on me, blazing like a stop sign on a lonely road.

“C’mon in, Yoshi! Water’s beautiful!” he cried, twisting his body in the gentle waves.

I was in shock.

He’d been true to his word, and I could safely say that the only thing he was wearing was a coating of red nail polish and dark eyeliner. Treading water, he pulled himself up to rest his chin on the side of the boat in which I still sat, wondering if I could ever again blink without seeing his naked body, silver in the moonlight, behind my eyelids.

“C’mon,” he repeated kindly, “I won’t look. You didn’t.”

Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and sank beneath the surface.

Of course, I had looked – not whilst he was getting undressed, because I knew he’d be watching me to make sure – when he’d turned his back to jump in. My imagination had been tormented, aroused by the sound of his clothes slipping over his skin and pooling in the bottom of the boat. I’d sprung numerous erections in Hide’s presence, but this was different, because he was naked in the water right behind me, his beautiful skin bare and wet…

“Ew!” he popped to the surface, giggling. “A fish just swam through my legs. C’mon!”

“Turn around,” I ordered self-consciously, and made sure he couldn’t see me before starting to work on my jeans. I’d left my shirt at the water’s edge, tucked away in a small hollow between several rocks – I wasn’t going to take it into the boat just to have him splash it with water, and suffer a cold, damp trip home. Besides, I was proud of my chest, for the strenuous physical exercise involved in drumming had built me a set of abs to be envied.

Hesitantly, I wriggled out of my boxers, tucking them shyly beneath my jeans. Naked, I stood.

“Turning ‘round now—” he blared in a foghorn voice, and I was so startled that I fell, wobbling off balance and face-planting the water. I kicked upwards frantically, not liking the feeling of the water over my head, and broke the surface with an indignant gasp. The first thing I heard upon pushing the wet hair away from my ears was his laughter, and though I wanted to be angry, I couldn’t. He still had the adorable, chuckly, childish laugh he’d had when I’d first known him. Things like that didn’t change, and so I just flipped onto my back and poked him with my foot.

“I wasn’t really gonna turn around,” he gasped, and I narrowed my eyes at him theatrically as he accidentally swallowed seawater and begun to cough and sputter.

“Urgh…” he grimaced.

“No less than you deserve, Hideto,” I grinned, and he flipped me off playfully. I grabbed his finger and kissed it.

“Yoshi…” he appeared embarrassed, and reluctantly used one hand to grip the boat. “Doesn’t it feel good?” he asked, “The water?” He slipped away from the boat and began to make his way over to a large rock that jutted out of the sea.

Wiggling my toes, I floated and simply enjoyed the night. The moon was out, reflecting off the water, and the next I saw of Hide was his silhouette as he climbed the rock to sit on the top, king of the ocean.

“Hey…” he glanced over at me shyly, “Don’t stare.”

Caught out, I bobbed in the water, embarrassed.

“Sorry,” I said hesitantly, gripping onto the boat for support, “It’s just…it’s nothing. Never mind.”

He looked so beautiful, I could have cried. When he pushed his hair back, the side of his face glowed silver in the moonlight, and I couldn’t help but watch the shift of his limbs as he stood up and stretched out his arms. With surprising grace for one who swam in such a splashy, rapid doggy paddle, he pressed his hands together over his head and dived into the water.

I waited.

He didn’t come up. Suppose the water wasn’t as deep as we’d suspected? He could have broken his neck! With my breath catching in my throat, I began to splash over to where he’d disappeared into the water, feeling under the surface with my arms desperately, only to have something seize my legs! I yelped aloud!

“HIDE!”

He burst out of the water like a wicked imp, laughing and gasping, pushing wet hair from his face and embracing me apologetically.

“Sorry. Irresistible,” he explained, tilting his head to the side charmingly – knowing I’d be won over, unable to resist yet again. “It’s just, you were staring so much, I thought you’d spaced out. I was going to swim over to you and try and grab your legs – you just made it a little easier by coming over to me.”

“I was watching you,” I mumbled, and he paused in the water.

“What?”

“You looked so beautiful,” I explained, my embarrassment making me miserable, “I couldn’t help it. You looked like an angel, divine. You were all in silhouette, and the moon was silver on your cheek.”

He paddled back to the rock briefly, but then smiled.

“No, you should see yourself. The light’s in your eyes, like you’re glowing.”

He said this quite unabashedly, pushing off gently from the rock to land in my eager arms. I was treading water madly, trying to keep myself upright, and slowly he dragged me backwards so he could lean against the rock, and I could lean against him. Smiling a little, he twined my hair around his fingers, playing with it before pushing it all back to see my face. Carefully, I traced a wet finger over his lips.

“Hide, were you born with a pout?”

He made a kissy-face.

“All natural,” he confirmed, and I cradled his face in my hands. I don’t know what was keeping me afloat – hope, probably.

“Can I kiss your natural lips?” I asked softly. “They’re beautiful lips.”

He hesitated, because we both knew that it couldn’t happen between us, and I shrugged before kicking off the rock and swimming back to the boat. He was following – I could hear him – but I didn’t turn around to look, or wait. I felt suddenly weary and heavy. The water seemed as viscous as custard, and I was glad when I eventually reached the boat. I was so tired; I could have been swimming, in circles, for years. 

“Yoshi—”

“Forget it,” I called over my shoulder, and saw him looking more serious than he ever had.

“Give up on me,” he warned, “We can’t do this, don’t you understand? We can’t…fall in love, or whatever. It’d never work.”

I whipped around in the water.

“Why not?” I demanded hotly. “I love you, and once, you…once—”

“Because,” he said, frustrated, “I’ve got a girlfriend.”

He didn’t meet my gaze. “It feels right with her. It…it didn’t with you.”

And yet a million times, his eyes had told me that what we’d done had felt more than just right.

Slowly, I turned away from him, slipping around to the other side of the boat to hoist myself up into it.

“Yoshi…”

I looked at him, naked in the water.

“Hide,” I interrupted stiffly, “What the hell do you think I’m made of?”

He pulled his waist out of the water and leant his elbows on the side of the boat, considering.

“The same as other men,” he said at last, “Only better.” He shook his head. “She’s not really a girlfriend. We just…”

“Sleep together. Use each other.”

He met my gaze.

“Yeah.”

I gave a stiff nod, lying back in the boat, and it rocked as he climbed aboard next to me. Sighing, he rested his head against my chest, playing idly with my hair as we kept our eyes on the stars. His wrist lay on my chest as he twirled a single lock of hair around his fingers, over and over again, and because he moved so cautiously, I pretended not to notice that his thumb was gently stroking over the nipple that his head didn’t cover. We lay there for a long while, the night air drying our bodies, and because I didn’t object to his gentle touch, he placed a soft kiss right where his fingers had been. I jumped slightly, startled, and he quickly withdrew.

“D’you think,” he said thoughtfully, “The stars are really what scientists say they are?”

I smiled, taking his hand and guiding it shyly back to my chest.

“I don’t know, Hide. What else would they be?”

Sighing, he shrugged, and linked his fingers with mine.

“I don’t know.” He wrinkled his nose. “I wish they weren’t just scattered like that. I see too much in them. People are guided by them, aren’t they? But they’re just gas. Still, I’d like to think they were something you could hold in your hand and keep with you.”

“Well, don’t ask me to fetch one,” I said seriously, “Or I’ll go mad trying to get it for you.”

He smiled, and tenderly moved my salty hair away from my face. He bent towards me, and hesitated for the longest time, just staring into my eyes – and then the thunder struck, and had to go and ruin it, making him jump away in shock.

“Toshi said there’d be a storm,” he mumbled, and I nodded. Silently, we dressed, and as we were rowing back to land, the rain set in. Feeling strangely numb, I forgot my shirt by the water’s edge, and got back to the apartment without it – and when I returned for it the next day, it was gone.

In April 1988, we released Vanishing Vision. If you could picture your life as one long line, from start to finish, I guess that’s where Hide’s line fused itself with mine, because that’s when it all became real – our sudden, jolting awareness of how our on-off, kiss-cuddle relationship would look through other peoples’ eyes. And that happened because, after I’d dashed off a quick note for Toshi and grabbed an umbrella to rush out and tell Hide the good news I’d just received, my room mate surprised me by walking straight in through the door.