Title: Helping
Pairings: JaeMin, YooSu
Rating: PG-13ish
Notes: Yay for Chapter 3! *grins* Again, kinda short. I'll hopefully be able to make the next ones longer for y'all. And for anyone who wants to keep track, I'm planning on following the order I set in the first chap, p.o.v.-wise. So far, so good.
Summary: Sequel to Possession. Falling can mean so many things: falling into his arms, falling in love, falling out, falling to pieces, falling apart...
Previous: Possession, Bonus Scenes, Falling: Part 1, Part 2

Chapter 3: Helping

You see it happening, could document the occurrences of things that are just a little bit… off. You can't explain why or figure out where and when things started going wrong. It probably started long before any of you noticed, before Jae started getting that expression in his eyes every time he looked at Min.

It's not quite pain or sadness, but it's more than serious contemplation. Min pretends not to notice; the rest of you pretend to believe he doesn't see it. For some reason, no one asks either one of them about it.

You watch as Jae slowly gives in, accepts the fact that things aren't working out the way you'd all hoped. Even worse, you can feel a part of you wanting to be so angry at Changmin for doing this. Not just doing it to Jae but to himself as well.

Something in his eyes keeps you from advancing beyond the just wanting to be angry. Something in the way he looks at you in the rare moments he makes eye contact makes you want to hold on and shelter him they way you used to when he first joined the group. You just can't figure out what to do about it all.

As Min chats and laughs with one of the photographers, you wonder how he can act the same as always but feel so far away. You catch Jae's eye across the room when he also looks away from Changmin, and you can tell he's thinking the same.

A few minutes later, the two of you are sitting together while the other three finish up some solo shots. You look at Jae looking at Min, and you feel briefly overwhelmed at how complicated everything has gotten. "Have you talked to him yet?"

He shakes his head without taking his eyes from Min. "I'm kind of scared of it, actually. What if he went through so much for so long that he's just tired of fighting for it, but he feels obligated to stay with me now?"

"I guess you could look at it like that." He opens his eyes again to look at you. "Changmin has always acted so mature that even we sometimes forget, I think, how young he still is. We want to forever keep him as our group baby, but we still lose sight of the fact that he's just barely out of childhood."

Jaejoong blinks, sighing as he drags a hand across his face. "Wow, okay, yeah. And now I feel like a pedophile. Thanks for that." He glares at you playfully before turning his attention back to Changmin. His eyebrows crease together as he attempts to put another thought into words. "Do you think, maybe, we really were too over-protective with him?"

Your gut reaction is to deny, deny, deny. If anything, you didn't do enough. "What do you mean?"

"Well, it's just… By sheltering him the way we have, especially the way we did at the beginning, we've kept him from experiencing so many things. And, yes, those things would have hurt him at the time, but maybe he needed that." He shakes his head then flops back in his chair.

You flip his words over in your head a few times, examining them from every angle to decide which one you like best. None of them make you all that happy. Because maybe Jae's right. Maybe all the sheltering and protecting you've done actually deprived Min of lessons he needed to learn. Maybe you all ended up hurting more than you helped.