the thought had vaguely occurred to jinyoung that these songwriting classes reminded him an awful lot of high school. he's always been happier with a more physical approach to learning, hands-on and exploring kinesthetically a much more enriching experience for him. sitting at a desk and penning down notes about stanzas and phrasing is not his cup of tea, honestly. but jinyoung doesn't complain; he can't now that he's in the company known for their creativity. he just ignores the way his skin prickles and how similarly the sun passes by the classroom window, the shadows shifting in the room the same way they used to in school.
jinyoung does his best to focus. maybe he even succeeds a bit, engrossed in his work as he tries his hand at lyric writing, whispering the words on the paper back at himself under his breath and trying to imagine them in rhythm, his fingers flexing and tapping against the pen as he tries to remember every word he can think of that rhymes with sway. he shifts in his seat, as if reshuffling his body will make his brain work any better, and scribbles down options in the margins of his paper: lay, may, bay, day, hay...
content/trigger warning: grooming, implied csa
her nails brush against his shoulder unintentionally, just the idle movement of an instructor who's trying to get a look and see if she needs to help a pupil out. and really, jinyoung should know that it means absolutely nothing; he's never seen this coach before, he hardly even remembers her name, and yet it's not her nails that he feels on his back even after she's withdrawn and moved onto another trainee. there was another woman, another teacher, not so many years ago that jinyoung can simply forget it now. her touches had been soft but laced with meaning, metaphorical poison under her fingertips each time she reached out to her favorite student. he hated it, he was addicted to it. no one else told him they loved him like she did and he believed it was real back then, not just some fantasy played out by a grown adult who surely knew better than to do what she was doing.
in a moment, jinyoung's stomach turns. he's frozen in place, hardly able to breathe as his vision goes blurry around the edges. his hand clasps the pen so tightly that his fingers turn white from the effort. it takes everything he has in him not to immediately run out of the room, to get as far away from her as possible. no, he doesn't want to cause a scene. he'll be good, just enough so he doesn't stand out from the rest of the class. he takes one deep, shuddery breath in and tries to keep from screaming.
he can't tell how long it is, but he's the first one out the door when the class is finally dismissed. it's as if he's in a daze, a panic so deep-set that he hardly even sees the people around him as he pushes against the crowd, desperate to find somewhere quiet and secluded to let this intense wave of emotion run its course. it would never be so simple, why would it be? when has moon jinyoung's life ever given him what he wants from it? he all but bowls over another trainee, eyes unfocused and still not quite seeing the young man in front of him even as he reaches out to steady the both of them, sorry, sorry, on his lips as he apologizes for nearly knocking them both over. he only realizes it's ren when he's trying to skirt around him again, only to stop short when he realizes this is exactly where he was trying to go all along; perhaps one of the least utilized practice rooms and an escape that jinyoung had found quite by mistake in his earliest days as a trainee. he doesn't have room to wonder what ren is doing here. he's at the end of his rope as it is, dangling over the edge before the final string snaps and he's falling into the icy deep end.
with nowhere left to run, despite the audience he now has, jinyoung collapses in on himself. he doesn't cry, he hardly makes a sound at all save for shallow gasps for air, choking on his own breaths as he tries and fails to fight down the ringing in his ears, his own heartbeat pounding wildly out of control, the terror and panic as he recalls what it felt like to be sixteen again. i'm the only one who could love you. did she ever actually say that? jinyoung can't remember; he just hears an all too familiar voice echoing in his skull.
"stop!" he cries out, followed by another fit of struggled sips of air. he wraps his arms around himself, shielding his body from a monster unseen yet very much felt. how embarrassing, another voice, not quite his own, whispers from inside his head. you should have been happy she did that with you; you're a man after all. no, not then; back then, jinyoung was still very much a lost child.
