When Jongin woke up to the howling of the wind, the crashing of the waves and the thunking of treasures rolling about in the hold, he wasn’t as bothered by them as he should have been. Not when they were all drowned out in their entirety by the soft, steady breathing of Captain Kyungsoo nestled into his side as he slept.

It was impossible to go onto the upper decks and outside, not when the weather had taken such a foul turn. Luhan joyfully crowed I told you so as the crew worked together, bringing the lanterns, weighted ropes and other sundries that usually lived on the deck from their places in the hallways down to the hold, to be secured in crates and barrels that, try as they may, the pirates just couldn’t keep from rolling around.

Kyungsoo would join them on occasion, but Jongin could tell his heart wasn’t in it – he seemed weary, pausing to lean against boxes periodically but only shaking his head when the others asked if he was alright.

“Doesn’t the captain fare well in storms?” Jongin asked Minseok one morning as they shoved crates around the hold, trying to box in the barrels with far sturdier crates and prevent them from falling over.

Minseok chewed his bottom lip thoughtfully. “The Siren’s weathered far worse than this.” The rest of his words were drowned out by booming thunder and a sickening lurch of the entire ship, sending Jongin, the quartermaster and the crate they had been moving toppling back in the direction they came from.

Sometimes the whole crew would be down there, sometimes only a few, but Jongin made himself busy every day moving things around or helping Yifan survey the ship for any signs of internal damage. Luckily things were alright for now, but if they weren’t diligent in their checks…there could be trouble for them all.

“Look closely.” Yifan would always tell him, but Jongin knew Yifan would be looking twice over everywhere he had left to Jongin anyway, and instead allowed himself to be lost in thought occasionally. Not thinking about the storm (oh no, Jongin never did like storms very much) but rather thinking about Captain Kyungsoo.

They hadn’t talked about their little conversation, not since they had it, and from the rest of the crew’s perspective nothing seemed to have changed between the two at all. But Jongin knew better – he knew that while they weren’t sure what it was between them, there was definitely something. He knew Kyungsoo’s touches had become less hesitant, his kisses more free (though still only behind closed doors.) He knew Kyungsoo’s stern, stoic expressions as he surveyed the crew doing their work concealed an extremely rare bashful side that it had become Jongin’s personal mission to bring out whenever he could.

But, while the captain’s affections were given far more freely when he and Jongin were alone together, his words were surprisingly few. Fewer than usual. At first Jongin had wondered if Kyungsoo was just embarrassed at letting his guard down around Jongin, and trying to re-establish his authority, but he noticed Kyungsoo wasn’t saying very much to the others either. A week into the storm, with the gales still raging and the unforgiving waters still battering the sides of the Siren, Kyungsoo was rarely appearing outside of his quarters at all, even to eat.

Minseok had left his seat at dinner to locate Kyungsoo one night, and returned a while later eyebrows raised. Apparently Kyungsoo had been asleep at his desk, so he left the captain some food and left him alone.

“But Minseok cooks so well, why would he skip dinner?” Luhan poked the quartermaster’s cheek and cooed, in an attempt to lighten the mood.

Most nights, when Jongin went to bed, Captain Kyungsoo was already asleep. He missed his kisses.

 

“Has anyone seen the captain today?”

“Nope.”

“Not me.”

“Me neither.”

“Has anybody seen him since yesterday?”

“He was sleeping when I woke up this morning.” Jongin’s words were met with a collective sigh from everybody in the hold.

Luhan draped himself over a box of spare sails and grumbled. “He’s probably come down with something. It’s quite like him to be macho about it. Has he said anything to you, Jongin?”

Jongin paused. “No? Why would he have said anything to me and not anyone else?”

“Well, you do spend an awful lot of time alone together.” He froze at Sehun’s words, blood running cold. “You know, before you came along, he never used to retire to bed so early. I assumed you two talked about a lot – I think we all did.”

Everybody else nodded, and Jongin wondered if it was normal to suddenly feel the urge to leap into the ocean. It was as though the eyes of the crew could see right through him, straight into his soul and everything he never wanted them to see.

“No, he doesn’t really talk much at all.” His voice was pitchy with nerves, but Jongin could only hope the others wouldn’t notice. After all, it wasn’t entirely a lie. “He just goes to sleep. He does wake up very early, so perhaps that’s why?”

The other pirates shrugged, seemingly accepting Jongin’s answer, and continued their work. Today’s task was patching up any damage to the hold itself from heavy goods clattering around.

“Sehun can help Yifan,” Minseok did a quick headcount from his position on top of a pile of crates; “I’ll help Luhan, and Zitao can be on emergency duty in case we have any accidents. Jongin, why don’t you go check on the captain? “

“Why me, and not Zitao?” He regretted that question the minute it left his mouth.

“Well,” the quartermaster’s smile was kind, “I just have a feeling he’d be happier to see you.”

He couldn’t have left the hold any faster.

 

Jongin knocked on the door of the captain’s quarters once, twice, but received no answer. He sighed against that imposing wooden door.

“Captain?” He doubted he’d get any kind of response, especially since knocking already yielded nothing, but it was worth a try anyway. Why are you shutting us all out? was left unsaid, and he pushed open the door. Kyungsoo was exactly where Jongin had left him several hours ago, tangled in a pile of sheets and looking remarkably uncomfortable for someone so soundly asleep. He looked so small then, in so many sheets on a bed that large. Like a child’s doll, almost. Taking a seat beside the sleeping captain on the mattress, Jongin tentatively reached out to touch Kyungsoo on the arm.

A grumbling noise was his response. “Captain…are you alright?”

Another grumble, but Kyungsoo opened his eyes this time. Despite all the sleeping he had been doing recently, he just looked…exhausted. And a little off-colour. “Jongin?”

“Everybody’s worried about you…shall I get Zitao?”

Kyungsoo shook his head.

“You’re burning up, Captain. Maybe you shouldn’t be under all those sheets…” More head shaking. “Well…well your only other option will be to remove some…some clothes.” Jongin felt his own face swiftly heat up again, but he had to be firm.

“No, Jongin.”

“Yes, Captain.” He tried to frown, but it turned into a little smile. “I’ll do it for you.” He flushed again, but powered through it, trying to keep his expression level.

Kyungsoo’s expression matched Jongin’s, for the most part. He was tired and clearly not feeling his best, but keeping his Captain Face on anyway, as serious as can be. And yet…he looked a little sad, too. With a sigh, he pushed some of the white sheets away from him and began to his shirt.

“Ah, let me…” Unsettled by Kyungsoo’s look of resignation and the captain’s sudden refusal to meet Jongin’s eyes, he gently nudged Kyungsoo’s hands away and set about ing the shirt himself. It was embarrassing at first, to be like this, taking off the captain’s shirt for him…!

But embarrassment quickly faded away, to make way for something else entirely as the fabric came away from Kyungsoo’s chest.

Jongin saw red.

Lots of red, at least maybe it had been red to begin with. A jagged gash in its first stages of scabbing over crossed the entire of Captain Kyungsoo’s chest, still red and tender looking around the edges and not a particularly comfortable colour anywhere else. Swipes of blood, dried by now, covered the captain’s torso almost completely.

He could see splinters.

“Captain!” Jongin brought his hands up to cover his mouth. Kyungsoo only continued pointedly looking away. “Captain…is this from the last engagement?!”

After a long, heavy silence, Kyungsoo closed his eyes and gave a slow nod. “I had my guard down.”

“What on earth did this to you..?” He didn’t touch the wound, but hovered over it uncertainly.

“A spirited one in the lower decks…I didn’t think a mop could do much damage, but the end was sharpened. I made him pay for it.”

Sehun’s words from before the engagement suddenly came back to Jongin. Never underestimate the swabbing boy.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” He hazarded the slightest touch on a raised, red patch on the outline of the wound. Kyungsoo hissed and shuffled away a little. “Zitao could have cleaned this up right away, but…”

“We ran out of the disinfectant while he was tending to you…we were already low on supplies, Baekhyun and Jongdae exhausted most of them treating Chanyeol, it would be irresponsible of me to waste more of them.”

He wasn’t really sure how to feel. Worry and concern bubbled together into anger, the three swirling around inside Jongin like the wind and the waves outside. The storm raging in him then was far stronger than anything nature could throw at them now.

“We can get more supplies – we can’t get more of you! Have you seen this?!”

Kyungsoo gave Jongin no answer, instead looking in the direction of the window with a frown.

“I…I’m going to get Zitao. I’m going to get him now. You can’t stop me.”

Kyungsoo said nothing, he didn’t even bother to move and somehow his utter resignation at it all was more uncomfortable for Jongin than any kind of protest. The corridors of the Calling Siren suddenly seemed longer than ever, wooden halls blending into each other as Jongin returned to the hold in pursuit of Zitao.

The black haired medic was watching idly as the others nailed planks over dents in the walls, and waved cheerily to Jongin when he entered. After a proper look at his crewmate, though, Zitao’s smile wasn’t so bright.

“What’s the matter? You don’t look well.”

“The captain is hurt.” Everyone stared at Jongin then, Sehun dropping the plank he was holding. “You have to help him.”

Zitao’s legs were long, and he made it to the captain’s quarters even before Jongin did. Kyungsoo had pulled one of the sheets over his chest again in Jongin’s absence, but when the two entered the room, he moved his hand away for Jongin to show Zitao the damage.

“Oh.” Zitao’s demeanour shifted, a change Jongin had come to recognise as Zitao concentrating on the job at hand. “Oh. This looks nasty.”

“It’s from the last engagement. A sharpened mop handle, apparently.”

It felt strange, speaking for the captain, but Kyungsoo wasn’t going to be talking any time soon and if anybody needed to know the details, it was Zitao.

“It’s definitely infected. Which would explain the captain’s fatigue recently – this is probably poisoning his entire system.” Zitao was far less hesitant to touch the wound than Jongin had been, nodding a little in understanding every time Kyungsoo recoiled. “I do wonder why he didn’t tell anybody about this when it first happened. I could have tried to treat it with something. But now he’s sick. Why on Earth would someone think it was a good idea to conceal a wound like this?”

Jongin felt like crying, but a small smile touched on his lips at Zitao’s little monologue as he assessed Kyungsoo’s condition. Zitao usually scolded the others when they were injured, but in the captain’s case, Zitao would just…indirectly tell him off instead. Truth be told, Jongin felt almost like slapping Kyungsoo at that moment, but he looked so pained already, Jongin couldn’t quite justify his thoughts no matter how much Kyungsoo may have deserved it.

The door opened, and the remaining four members of the crew filed into the room, led by Minseok.

“Infected wound.” Zitao announced to the others, as they all looked over the medic’s shoulders at the captain’s injury like some kind of curiosity at the zoo. “Likely to be the reason behind his tiredness. He’s very warm, too.”

“Can you do anything for him?”

“Right now? I’m afraid not. If the captain had said something earlier, I may have been able to mix something up with our remaining supplies, but we’ve already used a lot of them over the past week, and I’d need an awful lot to flush a wound like this out.”

The crew looked at one another in concern, but none quite so concerned as Minseok. Most of his face hidden behind his hands, the quartermaster didn’t seem to know what to do with himself.

“Why, Captain?”

Kyungsoo didn’t look at anyone, instead keeping his eyes trained firmly on the window.

“I didn’t want to concern anyone, or unnecessarily use up our supplies. They’re precious.”

“You’re ridiculous.” Minseok’s tone was unfamiliar; harsh and stern. “We have to get to land again, so we can replenish our supplies and get the captain treated properly.”

“No.” Kyungsoo sat up, though not without some difficulty. “We only just left the Opal Coast. We don’t need to lose any more time we could be using in our search.”

“So you’re saying we should leave you in this room to suffer, and for your wound to potentially kill you? Excellent idea. We’re going to land.”

“I’m the captain.”

“And I am your second in command.” Minseok narrowed his eyes, voice suddenly raised. “And right now you are in no condition to be making important decisions. We will be returning to land as a matter of urgency – Luhan, Sehun, where were we on track for before the storm hit?”

“Emerald Bay.” Sehun answered after a brief pause. “The bay is pretty wide, so even if we’ve been knocked off course by the storm we should still get there in a matter of days. We’ve not been there before, though.”

“I have.” Zitao piped up from his place on the floor beside Kyungsoo’s bed. “They’ll definitely have what we need there – the Emerald territories are known for their excellent doctors and export medicines all over.”

Luhan clapped excitedly. “True! The Amethyst Kingdom’s royal family only have doctors from the Emerald territories to treat them!”

“I’m sorry, Captain.” Minseok looked as upset as Jongin felt, maybe more, but his voice never lost that authority Jongin usually only heard from Kyungsoo himself. “But for everybody’s sake, we’re going back to land to find medicines for you. Even if we only stay in the bay for an hour, we have to land.”

Another sigh from the captain, and Minseok left the room, everyone but Jongin following suit.

The captain’s quarters suddenly felt very large and empty, and Kyungsoo looked very small. Not as small as Jongin felt, however, as he nervously sat down on the end of the bed.

“Captain…I’m sorry.”

Moving Kyungsoo’s shirt to elsewhere on the bed and bringing the bedsheet over the captain, Jongin avoided any eye contact. His earlier anger had lost its spark by now, settling down into disappointment instead. For all he and Kyungsoo had…

“I’m sorry that you didn’t trust me enough to say anything.”

 

Jongin forgave Kyungsoo that night between feather light, sleepy kisses, but there was still a pain in his chest caused by more than just a mop handle.

 

The storm didn’t settle for another few days, and the atmosphere in the lower decks of the Siren was uncomfortably tense. Minseok had taken up the captain’s duties for the time being while Jongin and Zitao took turns tending to Kyungsoo, Zitao giving the captain a bottle of medicine he had found in his case.

“It may not be exactly what we need, but it’s all we have, and you must take something.” He had said, and Kyungsoo quietly took his medicine without any fuss. He didn’t talk much, still, but he did find a few words for Jongin when they settled down together at night.

“I’m sorry.” He would murmur into the pillows, back pressed to Jongin’s as the two listened to the wind. And Jongin would tell him it’s fine, really even when his disappointment continued threatening to swallow him up like a wave.

“At least your face didn’t get infected.” Kyungsoo would tell him, Jongin’s cheek gently on his uninjured side.

“Yeah, but it’s still probably going to scar.” Jongin’s own wounds were healing very well, but the cuts were too deep to hope for a flawless recovery. Yifan told him the scars would make him look tough, while Luhan insisted they would make him look y, but Jongin still wasn’t particularly happy about it.

“You’re still beautiful.” And Jongin just couldn’t be angry.

 

As they drew closer to the Emerald Bay, it was still a little cloudy with only light rain, and the worst of the storm was definitely behind them. Luhan wondered aloud if the storms would be hitting the Opal Coast soon, and unlike usual, Minseok only shrugged rather than engage in the conversation.

Jongin found the older man alone on the lookout, watching as the first signs of land appeared on the horizon. His smile was sad as Jongin scrambled up to join him.

“You’re healing well.”

“And you’re hurting.” If being on the Siren had taught Jongin anything, it was that getting straight to the point was the best way to go. Minseok laughed weakly.

“I am…I’m just worried about the captain. I mean, obviously we all are, but…”

“But?”

“You won’t know this, Jongin, but the entire time the Calling Siren has been sailing, Kyungsoo has never once been treated for an injury. Not by Baekhyun, not by Jongdae, not by Yixing. He’s a strong man and a capable fighter, but to have gone all these years without a scratch, right in the thick of battle? It always did seem unlikely.” Jongin nodded in agreement. “It’s not just what happened recently that bothering me, really, but the fact that well…he’s probably done this before. Who knows how many injuries he’s hidden from us? Fought through alone to conserve supplies for the rest of us?”

Jongin awkwardly patted Minseok on the shoulder in an attempt to comfort him.

“I know we all have to keep our secrets – I mean, even I’ve had to do it. But for him to not trust us after so long…especially after what happened with Chanyeol, you’d think he’d be a little more responsible with his own injuries.”

“Who really knows how the captain’s mind works?”

“Nobody.” They both sighed together. “Maybe Joonmyun, but who knows?”

“You were very cool that day, Minseok.” The elder blinked at Jongin in surprise. “Standing up to the captain the way you did, taking control. I don’t think anyone else could have done it.”

“Well, he did make me second in command for a reason. He may not trust us with everything we want him to, but I may as well prove to him just why he had to have faith in me.” He smiled gently at Jongin then, gesturing to his own cheek to avoid accidentally touching Jongin’s healing cuts. “You’ve become pretty cool, yourself, pirate.”

“Minseooooooooooook!” Sehun called from down on the deck, waving up at the pair. “I think one of the potato barrels in the galley has broken – there’s potatoes rolling all around the lower decks!”

The quartermaster shook his head with a chuckle, and made to climb down out of the lookout. He grinned to Jongin. “Come on, mister big scary pirate; are you up for a life-threatening recovery mission?”

Needless to say, Jongin was up for anything. When he pursued one stray vegetable all the way to the captain’s quarters, Kyungsoo’s faint laughter at Jongin chasing the potato under the desk made him feel like perhaps, very soon, things were going to be just fine again.