Zhang Yixing is woken in the absolute middle of the night by heavy, urgent knocking on his door.

In England, this would have been rare, and cause for alarm.  No one would have pounded on his door this late unless it was a real emergency - the English are far too polite for that.

But he’s not in England anymore.  He’s in Tortuga, and midnight door-poundings are commonplace.  Still, Yixing is a professional, so he rouses quickly, throwing on a dressing gown and lighting a lamp on his way to unlock his front door.

He is greeted by a blinding smile, improbably white teeth flashing in the dim light of his lamp.  He blinks myopically.

“Pardon me,” the man with the teeth says politely.  “Do I have the honor of addressing Doctor Zhang Yixing?”

Yixing blinks at him again.  “I suppose you do have that honor, sir,” he replies, his voice soft and scratchy with sleep.  “Is there some emergency?”

The man smiles again, and though it is no less bright, no less handsome, Yixing sees that it is tight around the edges.  He’s hiding it well, but this man is worried.

“You have quite the intuition, sir,” he quips, stepping aside.  Yixing holds up his lamp higher and the dim circle of light illuminates two men who are supporting a third between them.  They all look a bit worse for the wear, but the third man is covered in blood and clearly cannot walk under his own power.

Yixing steps back into the house.  “Come in,” he says shortly.

He heads straight back for his treatment room, lighting the lamps on the walls from the one in his hand.  He pulls off his dressing gown and rolls up his sleeves - the gown is very finely made, one of the few luxuries he has allowed himself, and blood is difficult to clean from brocade.  Besides, this is not the first time he has seen to a patient in his nightshirt, nor is it likely to be the last.

The four men follow him back.  “Get him up there,” he says shortly, jerking his chin at the bed.  They obey, and Yixing pins his rolled-up sleeves in place and scrubs his hands in the basin, taking a moment to splash water on his face in an attempt to fully waken.

When he turns back, the first man is settling his patient back on the clean white linens and the two men who were supporting him are standing around looking awkward.   That won’t do - they’ll get in the way.

“You,” Yixing says, pointing at the taller of the two men.  He looks up, and ‘man’ is really a bit inaccurate - he looks barely out of boyhood, large eyes a bit shell-shocked.  “There’s a well out back, and two buckets.  Please fill them both and bring them to me.”  

The young man looks to the first man for confirmation, and receives a nod.  He goes.  There’s something off about the way he moves, but Yixing doesn’t have time right now to analyze it.  “You,” he says to the second man, a little bit smaller, a little bit older, and a little bit better-dressed.  “Start a fire, there in the hearth.  Please,” he adds as an afterthought.  This man does not seem to need permission the way the first did; he just does it.  Yixing appreciates that.

Bringing his hand-held lamp close, Yixing begins his examination.

It’s immediately clear that his patient has been in a fight - probably a bar brawl - quite recently.  Bruises of varying shapes and densities are beginning to bloom under his skin, and there is what appears to be the shattered remains of a glass bottle embedded in his chest.  Following his visual examination is the manual one, and Yixing quickly discovers a number of broken bones - fingers, ribs, foot.  The worst, though, is his left shin, the reason he cannot walk.

“You’ve taken quite a beating,” he says conversationally as he reaches for his shears and plans his procedure.  The leg must be taken care of first, then the glass; the rest can wait until after.

“You should see the other man,” his patient quips, tossing him a wide and slightly mad-looking pained smile.  Yixing ignores him and starts cutting away the laces holding his boot on.  It’s a long, long leg, and the boots are quite tall and heavy, so it takes a bit.  When the laces are completely sliced through, Yixing sets the shears aside.

The man who first knocked on his door is now leaning against the far wall, watching them with eyes hidden in the shadow of a well-worn tricorn hat.  “Will you have to amputate?” he asks quietly.

Honestly, the state of the medical practice in the Caribbean is abhorrent.  “Not if I have any say in the matter,” Yixing says shortly as he gathers up the materials he will need from his cabinets.  “What’s your name?”  he asks his patient as he pulls out gauze, splints and bruise salve.  

“Chanyeol, sir.”

“You have any rum in your system, Chanyeol?”

Another mad grin.  “Just a couple of pints.”

Yixing nods.  “That’ll help.  You might want this.”  He hands a rolled-up handkerchief to his patient, who takes it and obediently stuffs it between his teeth.  Clearly, he has done this before.

Yixing looks to the man who seems to be in charge.  “A hand, please?”

Together, they carefully remove Chanyeol’s boot, with only a few pained grunts from the man with the shattered leg.  Yixing prods the muscles to gauge Chanyeol’s tension level, then eyes the bone.  The good news is that shin breaks are easy to see; the bone is close to the surface.  The bad news, unfortunately, is that the bone is so close that the sharp bone fragments have punctured the skin.  He doesn’t even have to touch the leg to know where the break is - he can see the blood-covered white of the bone itself.

Yixing lays his hands on the man’s shin and without warning pulls the bone back into alignment.  Chanyeol screams, muffled slightly by the cloth in his mouth.

“Shouldn’t you have warned him?” the other man says mildly as Chanyeol pants in pain around the gag.

Yixing doesn’t look up, too busy binding the splints to the sides of his calf.  “He would have tensed and it would have been impossible,” he replies shortly.  Footsteps make him look up from his work - it’s the boy, bringing back the water.  “Into the cauldron over the fire, please,” he says, pointing.  He will need a large amount of boiled water for this.

The boy goes, and Yixing stops for a moment to watch him, because yes, there is something wrong with the way he is walking.  At first he thinks it is an old injury - in a place like this most men have something that plagues them - but that’s not right.  The boy looks like he’s dizzy, like he’s having trouble walking a straight line.

Yixing looks up at the leader.  “Do me a favor and go shine a lamp into your boy’s eyes, there.  Tell me what you see.”

He gets a blink of confusion, then it dawns and the man hurries to do as he’s told.  He looks into the boy’s eyes and swears heartily.

“Blast it, Jongin,” he says.  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Concussion?” Yixing guesses, carefully removing fragments of bone from the hole in Chanyeol’s shin with forceps.

“His pupils didn’t dilate the same, so yes, that would be my guess.  How did you know?”

“The way he was walking.  You’ll need to keep him awake for at least the next six hours then.”

A snort, from the man tending the fire.  “Good luck with that,” he says.

It turns out to be fairly easy, actually, because they’re all up for the next four hours at least while Yixing works.  He cleans out and sews up the wound on Chanyeol’s shin and finishes binding the splints; he removes the glass in Chanyeol’s shoulder, cleans and sews those lacerations as well; then he sets and wraps the minor breaks in the fingers and foot; cleans every wound, salves every bruise.  Any bit of infection that takes hold now could spread to the weakened bones or into the blood and result in the amputation he is trying to avoid, so he is meticulous in his work.  Then, as he instructs Chanyeol how to care for the broken leg in the weeks to come, he examines the boy Jongin as well.  As he suspects, in addition to the concussion, there is some neck strain and the boy is hiding a sprained wrist.  

Yixing doesn’t need to be told what happened; the lot of them got caught up in a bar brawl and they’re probably all ignoring injuries.  He makes the man at the fire submit to an examination and finds some fractured ribs and a black eye that hadn’t yet started developing when they’d first knocked on his door, but when he turns to their leader - their captain, actually, he’d heard them referring to him as such - he is rebuffed.

“You’ve done enough doctoring for one night, Doctor,” the captain says, not unkindly.  “You’re falling asleep on your feet.  Go to bed.  We will watch over our crewmates.”

He protests, but finds himself gently and firmly guided to his bedroom.  Before the door closes, he hears “Baekhyun, take Jongin back to the ship.”  

Too exhausted to care that these men are probably pirates, and he should probably not leave them alone and unwatched in his home, Yixing falls into bed and is asleep practically before he hits the pillow.  

When he next wakens, it is after noon, and the house is empty.  He almost thinks he has dreamed the whole thing, except for the blood on his nightshirt and the bag of Spanish doubloons on the treatment bed that equals more than twice what he normally would have charged for four hours of work.

The note next to the bag is written in flowing script.  It says simply, thank you, and is signed Captain Suho.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

It is several months later when Yixing answers the door and sees Captain Suho again.  It’s daylight, and Suho is not smiling this time, and so it takes Yixing a moment to recognize him.

“Is your bed free?” Suho asks, and Yixing blinks at him in confusion before he realizes Suho’s talking about his treatment bed.  He looks over Suho’s shoulder and sees Chanyeol and another man carrying a makeshift stretcher between them.  The condition of the man on the stretcher makes his breath catch.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he breathes.  “Yes, yes, my God, come in.”

He leads the stretcher-bearers to the treatment room and talks them through transferring the patient to the bed as he is performing his scrubbing-up ritual.  He is vaguely aware of Suho following them, but frankly he only has eyes for the patient, a short, slim man with wide, glassy eyes and old bandages wrapped around an alarmingly large portion of his ribs and right shoulder.  He is clearly feverish, to the point of delirium; there is sweat caked on his brow and he is mumbling incoherently to himself.

“What happened?” Yixing asks shortly, reaching like last time for his shears.  “And how long ago?”

“About a month ago now.” Suho’s voice is quiet.  “There was an accident when he was loading cannon.  Severe burns on his right shoulder and chest.”

“It’s my fault,” the one man Yixing doesn't recognize says.  Yixing spares him a glance - he is blond, extremely pretty, and looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks, guilt and worry etched into his face and aging him ten years.

“It’s not,” Chanyeol assures Yixing.  “But he won’t stop blaming himself.”

“Hush, boys,” Suho murmurs.  “Doctor Zhang, is there anything we can do to assist you?”

“Just Yixing is fine,” he says distractedly as he starts cutting open the bandages.  “Let me take a look.”

His first clue that something is very, very wrong is the smell.  No living man should smell so very like a corpse.  He peels the dirtied linen bandages away from the wound to reveal a huge burn, red and bubbled and blistering, stretching from the bottom of the ribcage and all the way up to the collarbone, down the shoulder and bicep nearly to the elbow.  The section of the burn on the arm is large and severe but clearly in the process healing on its own; it’s the section on the chest that is in bad shape.  The wound is pus-filled and putrid, badly infected, and parts are going necrotic, the flesh blackened and dead.

“We cleaned it as best we could,” Suho says.  His voice is soft and close; Yixing glances over his shoulder and sees him standing just behind, his hand resting on the patient’s leg.  “But a ship is not exactly the most sterile of sickbays.  I’m sorry, we were quite far out.  This is the fastest we could make it to shore.”

Yixing nods.  “This is a very advanced infection,” he says, keeping his voice calm.  The blond man already looks like he’s on the verge of tears; no need to frighten him further.  “I will do what I can.”  He gauges the size of the wound carefully, estimating.  

“Chanyeol,” he says, “are you familiar with the market inland?”  He glances up to see Chanyeol nod.  “Good.  There is a native woman near the bread-sellers who sells honey by the pint.  Go buy two pints.”

Chanyeol blinks at him, confused.  Yixing shoots him a look.  “Quick now!”  He starts in surprise, and then takes off, striding out of the room on ludicrously long legs.  Yixing is pleased to see his shin has healed well.

“Honey?” Suho asks.  Yixing blinks a little before realizing it’s not an endearment, it’s an inquiry.  Suho needs to stop hovering behind Yixing, it’s very distracting.

“Honey never goes bad,” Yixing informs him.  “It crystallizes after a while but it never spoils, not even after years and years.  It’s the only known organic substance that does not spoil.”  The arm will be fine on its own; Yixing can simply poultice it and re-wrap it with new, clean bandages.  “And so, honey can be used to seal a wound and stop an infection from spreading.”

“It’s...it’s that simple?”  The blond’s eyes are hopeful.  Yixing gives him his kindest smile.

“I’m afraid it’s not.  Do you see these black patches?”  He points.  The blond nods.  “That is death, plain and simple.  There is nothing that will bring that flesh back; it must be removed entirely before this man can even begin to heal.”

“Xiumin,” the blond says, voice so soft and forlorn.  “His name is Xiumin.  And I’m Luhan.”

Xiumin turns his head towards Luhan at the sound of his own name.  That’s a good sign - he’s not completely out of his mind, then.

Yixing can’t have Luhan underfoot for this, but neither can he bear to separate them.  No matter what Chanyeol says, it’s clear Luhan is blaming himself, and it is equally clear he cares very much for Xiumin.   So he asks, “Are you squeamish?”

Luhan looks at him.  “Um.  Not...particularly?”

Yixing points to the chair.  “Pull that over and sit on his other side,” he commands.  “This is going to be painful and possibly quite disturbing for him, and in his current mental state, I don’t think he would understand if I tried to explain to him what was happening or why.  I need you to distract him.”

Nodding, Luhan does as he is told.  Xiumin’s glazed eyes track him as he moves, and he turns his head to listen when Luhan starts speaking to him softly, his good hand held between Luhan’s.

Satisfied with that, Yixing turns to Suho.  “Are you squeamish?” he asks.

The captain meets his eyes squarely.  “No.”

He’d guessed as much.  “There is a waste barrel on the side of the property,” he murmurs, keeping his voice very low.  He pulls an empty, wide-mouthed brown glass jar from his cabinet.  “I need you to bring me live maggots.  Just enough to cover the bottom of this jar.”

Suho’s eyes widen.  “What?”

Yes, that’s the usual reaction.  Rather calmer than the usual reaction, actually.

“Maggots eat dead flesh,” he explains patiently.  “Trust me when I say it will be far cleaner and less painful than if I try to surgically remove the necrosis.”  He presses the jar into Suho’s hands.

To his credit, the captain does not hesitate further.  He takes the jar, clenches his jaw, and goes.

While he waits, Yixing carefully cleans the wound as best he can.  Maggots prefer a damp environment, so he prepares a saline solution in case the wound is too dry and they reject it.

He tries not to eavesdrop on Luhan, but it’s hard not to catch snatches of what he’s saying.  It seems he’s recounting stories of their adventures on the high seas, familiar stories that Xiumin probably already knows, that even in his delirium he could understand and follow.  Smart man.

It’s really what Luhan is not saying that movies Yixing, though.  Their friendship is quite touching, and makes Yixing even more determined to save this man.

Suho returns with the jar, and Yixing sets to work.  He starts with the biggest patch of dead flesh, high on the chest and shoulder, carefully using forceps to transfer the insects a few at a time.

They don’t move away from the wound, settling down immediately, which is a good sign.  He continues transferring until the container is empty and Xiumin’s shoulder looks like a crawling, wriggling nightmare.

When he is done, he looks up.  Luhan’s face has paled, but he’s still talking, his eyes fixed on Xiumin’s.  He’s got one hand tangled in Xiumin’s hair, gently encouraging him to keep his face turned away from the burn so he does not see the hellish image of his own skin.  Satisfied with that, Yixing puts down his tools and stretches out his hunched shoulders.

Suho, who has been watching from the corner, holds up a jar of honey.  “Yeol came back,” he says quietly.  “I kept him out of the room.”

“Probably smart,” Yixing murmurs back.  Chanyeol strikes Yixing as the type to make a scene when confronted with something disturbing.  “You don’t need to stay, you know.  Maggots don’t eat very quickly; this will take some time.”

“I don’t mind staying,” Suho replies.  “Baekhyun can handle the ship just fine in my absence.  And it seems I learn something new every time I see you.”  He jerks his chin at the wound.  “If I’d known that, I would have done it right away,” he says, and he sounds upset with himself.  “We have maggots a-plenty on the ship.”

Yixing huffs out an amused breath.  “Mine are cultivated specifically for this,” he points out.  “Some maggots only eat dead flesh, some eat only live, and some eat both.  If you use the wrong breed you only magnify the problem.”

“Ah.”  For the first time, Suho looks a bit ill.  “See?  I learn so much from our encounters.”

That brings a smile to Yixing’s face.  “Let me make us some tea, then.”

It is a full day before the dead tissue is gone, during which time Yixing changes the squirming dressing half a dozen times and sleeps in short catnaps while Suho keeps watch over Xiumin and Luhan.  When he is satisfied with the progress of the wound, he cleans the maggots away, coats the wound in the honey and dresses it, bandaging it securely.  Xiumin’s fever already appears to be waning; he is asleep more than he is awake now and the delirium seems to have mostly passed.

Over the next few days, the other members of the crew stop by in ones and twos, checking on Xiumin and on Luhan who refuses to leave his side.  Yixing re-examines Chanyeol’s leg and Jongin’s wrist; both men are young and strong and have healed well.  He meets Sehun and Chen, Kyungsoo and Kris and Tao, and at one point Baekhyun even stops by, during one of the few times that Suho returns to the ship.  

It surprises him to learn that ...that is it.  That’s every member of their crew.  A total of eleven men, the oldest maybe just past his thirtieth year.

“You have the smallest pirate crew I have ever heard of,” he tells Suho one evening as they take supper.  “How do you manage to run a ship with less than a dozen men?”

Suho grins.  Now that Xiumin is improving, his blinding smiles are back.  “They are very good at what they do,” he says.  “And, well...it isn’t a very large ship.”

Yixing laughs and sets his utensils down on his plate.  Supper was brought in from Suho’s favorite tavern down the road, on Suho’s coin.  The captain has been treating Yixing quite often during his stay, despite Yixing’s protests.  “I suppose that explains why you don’t have a surgeon on board,” he comments offhandedly.  Most pirate vessels, after all, employ a doctor or surgeon of some description, and injuries like Xiumin’s are precisely why.

Dark eyes meet his.  “Have you ever fancied the sea, Yixing?”  

“When I was a boy, I nearly joined the Navy,” he admits.  “My mother convinced me to go to medical school instead.”  He ducks his head, huffing a humorless laugh.  “For all the good that has done me.”

“The British Navy?” Suho asks.  Yixing nods, not surprised Suho has guessed his nationality - if his accent doesn’t give him away, his penchant for tea does.  Suho himself sounds like a Colonist, possibly New England.  “Then how did you end up in Tortuga?”

“Ah.  That, my friend, is a long story.”  Yixing gets up to put the kettle on; he’s been going through his special blend of calming tea quite quickly with Luhan around.  “How current are you on the political events in England in the last five years?”

Dark eyes regard him curiously.  “I hear the gossip,” Suho says.  “Sometimes not until months or years after the fact, but it gets down here eventually.”

“Then you will have heard of the ill-fated rebellion.”

Suho’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline.  “I cannot picture you a rebel against the Crown,” he says in surprise.  

Yixing dimples at him from the stove.  “You know me better than I had expected, sir,” he says.  “Truth, I was not a rebel.  Nor, though, was I a Royalist.  I simply was of the opinion that if a man has a rifle ball in his gut, it is a doctor’s duty to treat him.”

“I see,” Suho says slowly.  “You treated the wrong man.”

“At least in the eyes of the King,” Yixing confirms, nodding.  “And so I was arrested as a sympathizer.  I was one of the lucky ones who were sold to the Jamaican slavers; many were sentenced to death on the spot.”  He returns to his seat to wait for the kettle’s whistle.  “Upon transport our ship was caught in a hurricane and sunk.  A handful of us were rescued by a French merchant ship, and with my services as a doctor I was able to barter passage here.”  He shrugs.  “And here I have stayed.”

Suho leans the chair back onto its back legs.  “The King’s loss is Tortuga’s gain,” he says with another handsome smile.  “I dread to think what would have happened had you not seen to Xiumin.”

He would have been dead within the week.  But Yixing does not say that, instead observing, “If I may...you are quite protective of your crew.  Moreso than one would expect of a pirate captain.  Is there a reason?”

The captain’s dark eyes drop to the table.  “More than my crew,” he explains, “they are my brothers.”  He glances back up, his smile a fleeting shadow of its usual brightness.  “If I am completely honest with you, we are pirates in name only, in that we have no country, sail under no nation’s colors.  We manage with such a small crew because we do not go after the fat targets, but rather the small ones, with less riches but also less guns.  We run more often than we fight.  It is a dangerous life, but not a reckless one, and I have never lost a man.  I hope I never will.”

They both know the chances of that are slim.  “I hope so as well,” Yixing says anyway, because what does a man have, but his hope?

“Come with us,” Suho suddenly offers.  “Our chances would be greatly increased with a doctor aboard.”

Yixing blinks.  He hadn’t been expecting an offer, though perhaps he should have been, and has no answer.  Join a pirate crew?  Him?

Suho seems to take his hesitation as rejection.  “You don’t need to sign the articles,” he says quickly.  “Doctors often do not.  I will pay your salary myself.”  He looks so hopeful, but it is a big decision, one that changes literally everything about Yixing’s life.

“Allow me to think on it,” he hedges.  Suho looks like he is about to protest, but thankfully does not.

And think on it Yixing does.  For the next few days, he watches Suho’s crew together and tries to imagine himself one of them.  Because if he was to join a pirate ship, it would be as a full member of the crew, bound by the articles just like the rest, and not as a doctor-for-hire pulling a salary regardless of whether the rest of the crew prospered or starved.  

But there are too many unknowns, too many questions, too many dangers.  And frankly, the idea of getting back on a ship, after the horrors he lived through the last time...He can’t do it.

He tells Suho as much, the night before they leave.  The captain, who has become a good friend in the past two weeks, looks disappointed but not surprised.

“The offer remains open,” he says as Kris and Chanyeol are moving Xiumin to the stretcher for his trip back to the ship.  Luhan is with them, a pack on his back filled with everything he will need to continue to care for Xiumin and the letter detailing doctor’s orders clutched in his hands.  He hasn’t stopped smiling since Xiumin’s fever broke.

“Thank you,” Yixing says, sincerely.  “If I ever have the urge to take to the sea, rest assured the Two Moons will be my first choice of vessel.”  He hasn’t even seen the ship, but he feels as though he knows it just from the stories of Suho and his crew.  “And you are always welcome here, whether you need a physician or not.”

Suho shakes his hand firmly and smiles bittersweet.  Yixing wants to drag the man forward, to embrace him, but he does not.  He simply returns the smile and watches as Suho follows his crew down the path and out of sight.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Despite their genial parting, it is over a year before Yixing sees the crew of the Two Moons again.  At first, Yixing thinks of them often, wondering where they are and what trouble they are into, wondering if he passed up a chance he should have taken.  But months and months go by, and Yixing all but forgets about them entirely.

So when a slightly drowned-looking Baekhyun appears on his doorstep one evening during a fierce storm, with a sopping wet and alarmingly solemn Chanyeol at his side, it takes Yixing a moment to recognize them, and another moment before the dread hits him across the chest like a physical blow.

“It’s the captain,” Baekhyun says, confirming Yixing’s worst fear.  “He’s taken ill.  We didn’t want to move him in this storm, can you come?”

Yixing goes, of course.  

The Two Moons is indeed a small ship, single-masted and singularly unimpressive next to the larger vessels in the harbor.  She is small enough to get quite close to the docks, though, so Yixing is able to step right onto the ladder from the dock, no rowboat or gangplank necessary.

The captain’s cabin is aftmost, and clearly the largest single room on the ship despite being half the size of Yixing’s bedroom.  Luhan is next to the bed, an achingly familiar sight, but this time Xiumin is sitting up next to him instead of the one on the bed.  Yixing notes distractedly that the gunner’s arm seems to have regained near-full mobility, though his movements are a bit stilted still.  Then he pushes thoughts of his previous patient aside in favor of the one who needs him.

Suho is awake, and flashes a sad imitation of his usual heartstopping smile.  “Yixing,” he says softly, his voice scratchy and weak.

“Good evening, Captain,” Yixing says, reaching out to take Suho’s hand.  His skin is clammy and cold, his grip frail, but he closes his fingers around Yixing’s.  Suho opens his mouth again, but Yixing hushes him.  “Please don’t try to speak right now,” he says.  “Until I have a diagnosis, it may be doing more harm than good.”

Suho looks torn between annoyance and amusement, but quickly exhaustion wins out and he does as he is bade, letting his head drop back against the pillows.  Yixing looks across the bed to Luhan and Xiumin.

“What are his symptoms?” he asks.

Luhan pulls out a piece of parchment and starts listing them, along with when each began.  Apparently he learned something from his stay with Yixing, because the records he has kept are most helpful, and Yixing quickly starts to put together the picture.  At first the illness presented as a common cold, but it grew steadily worse in the past weeks, and when Suho collapsed on deck in convulsions a week ago the crew confined him to his cabin and made straight for Tortuga.

It’s the convulsions that tip Yixing off.

“You say he has had an intermittent fever?” Yixing asks.  Luhan nods.  “How often?”

Luhan looks at his notes.  “Every two days,” he says slowly.  “Its...it’s exact.  Like clockwork.  How did I not notice that?”

“You weren’t looking for it,” Yixing assures him gently.  “And between the fevers?”

“Cold.”  Suho huffs out a breath from the bed, his fingers tightening around Yixing’s.  “Middle of July in the Caribbean and I’m shivering like a street urchin in a Boston winter.”  He starts coughing, as if to emphasize his point; ugly hacking phlegmy coughs.

Yixing bites his lip.

“Doctor?” Xiumin is the one to break the silence, to ask the question.  “Is it...is it bad?”

“It may be,” he says softly, squeezing Suho’s hand in what he hopes is a reassuring way.  Luhan makes a small noise, and Xiumin wraps an arm around his shoulders comfortingly.  “Captain, a favor please?”  Suho blinks at him.  His gaze is steady, which is reassuring; in very advanced cases sometimes the eyes dance disconcertingly.  “Follow my finger with your eyes.  Try not to move your head.”

Suho does as he is bade, and Yixing’s fear is confirmed - his eyes do not track correctly.  

Yixing lets out a long breath.  “What you have done to see to his comfort is correct,” he assures Luhan.  “Please continue to watch over him for me.  I will return shortly.”  He gently untangles his fingers from Suho’s and leaves the room.

Baekhyun is waiting outside the room, looking haunted.

“Is there somewhere we can speak in private?”  Yixing asks.  Baekhyun nods and leads him to a cabin down in the fore of the ship.  The second mate and bo’sun Kris is inside, reading reclined on one of the two thin bunks.  He sits up immediately when Yixing enters.

“Shall I leave?” Kris asks.  Baekhyun looks to Yixing, who shakes his head.

“No need,” he says.  Better that the first and second mates, as the remaining leadership of the crew, both be present for this.

Baekhyun gestures at what must be his own bunk, and Yixing sits.  Baekhyun himself remains standing, leaning on the wall next to Kris’s bunk.  “Well, Doctor?”

Heavens.  Yixing runs a hand through his hair.  “It’s malaria,” he says softly.  “The convulsions and the paroxysmal cycles are textbook.”  

Baekhyun’s eyes flutter shut.  “God in Heaven,” he breathes.  “Will he recover?”

That is the question, isn’t it?  “If treated correctly, malaria is curable,” Yixing hedges.  “However, he has gone untreated thus far, and the disease is taking hold in his brain.  I believe he can be saved,” he says, before Baekhyun can call on God again.  “But it will take time.  Possibly, quite a long time.”

Baekhyun is silent.  It’s Kris who asks, “What do you suggest?”

And this is the part where he needs their cooperation.  “I suggest that you leave Suho behind with me.”  Two pairs of eyes widen and both start protesting, but Yixing quickly assures them, “Not permanently!  Just while he recovers.  Let us suppose...a year.”

“You think it will take him a year to recover?” Baekhyun asks, incredulous.

How to explain?  “It will likely take weeks and weeks for treatment to eradicate the disease, and possibly weeks more before Suho is recovered enough strength to be galavanting around the world,” he says.  “But malaria is conniving.  It can lurk dormant in the body and remerge months after the patient seems to recover, if the treatment is not thorough enough.  My fear is that once he considers himself recovered, Suho will take off for adventure, and find himself too far away for treatment should a relapse occur months later.  Have I judged his character correctly?”

Kris and Baekhyun exchange a look.  “You have indeed,” Kris says, a touch of amusement in his deep voice.  “It seems you know our Captain well.”

Not really; men of adventure are all the same in that regard.  No one chooses the life of a sailor, pirate or no, unless they have a wanderer’s heart.  But Yixing lets them think what they please.

“There is no need to move him tonight, in this horrid weather,” Yixing says.  “Malaria is not a pitched battle, it is a siege; one more night without treatment will not make a significant difference.  I leave it up to you whether you inform the captain or not, but either way, once he is settled, you must sail away without him.  We cannot have the temptation of the ship nearby, and I’m sure you’d prefer the crew not dally in Tortuga for a full year in any case.”

Kris and Baekhyun both agree to his plan, in the end.  They decide they will tell the captain once he is off the ship and settled at Yixing’s, so that the crew may bid him farewell.  

Yixing stops back at the captain’s cabin to check on Suho, but the man has fallen asleep, exhausted.  It gnaws on Yixing’s insides to see him like this, such strength and vitality and personality reduced to pale, sickly, and shivering.  It seems he has his work cut out for him.

Seeing as the ship is docked, he does not hesitate to ask to borrow a crewman for the evening.  Baekhyun sends Chanyeol out with him, citing that the quartermaster needs to visit the marketplace anyway.

In this weather, at this time of night, Yixing would usually not dare to make the trek inland.  The city of Tortuga is not a friendly place at the best of times, but on a night like tonight, the only people in the streets are the ones who have nowhere else to go and nothing to lose.  Chanyeol, tall and broad with a massive, basket-hilted scimitar at his hip, is a reassuringly threatening figure by Yixing’s side, and no one bothers them.

Chanyeol stops by a few shops to barter, which Yixing watches with interest.  He had wondered how someone like Chanyeol came to be given the rather vital post of ship’s quartermaster, but when he sees Chanyeol barter he understands.  His loud, brash demeanor, coupled with his winning smile, seem to have nearly all of Tortuga simultaneously charmed and afeared.   No one dares attempt to cheat him and several merchants seem to even compete for his business, offering extras and deals.

Yixing takes advantage of this, riding on the coattails of Chanyeol’s haggling to procure some extra supplies for himself.  After all, he’s about to be supporting two men, one very sick, on wages that have previously supported one.  The provisions can’t hurt.

Once Chanyeol has arranged for the supplies to be delivered to the ship, Yixing leads him down to the very end of the market, then through the back alleys to the little hovel that is his reason for his visit tonight.

The powder he needs is rare, imported, and extremely expensive, and he is going to need a lot of it.  The family in this hovel are immigrants, former slaves from the southern Americas who were escaped like he, and they are the only dealers in such things that he knows of.  If he is lucky, they will have a supply of cinchona-tree bark on hand.  It will be costly and Yixing does not care, because it is the best-known treatment for malarial fevers, and he will not be letting Suho die.

Bartering with the native couple is a challenge, as they speak Quechua, and Yixing himself knows approximately four terms in that language, all of them medicinal herbs.  Through gesturing, wordless sounds, and a few stilted words in their common language of Spanish, Yixing manages to communicate what he needs, and to his relief it seems they have a goodly supply on hand - enough, Yixing estimates, for a full two months of treatment.  It is a start.

He is surprised, however, when he reaches for his purse and Chanyeol stops him with a hand on his arm.

“This is for the Captain, isn’t it?” he asks.  Yixing nods.  “Then I’ll pay.  You’re already doing enough.”

Yixing does not protest, despite his genteel upbringing insisting he do so.  He simply thanks Chanyeol and watches in awe as Chanyeol manages to haggle the price down without speaking even one word in either Quechua or Spanish.

They leave the hut with their precious cargo wrapped in linen and tucked securely under Yixing’s coat and Chanyeol escorts Yixing back to his home.

Chanyeol questions him on the medicine he has purchased - what is it, where does it come from, how does it work, has he ever used it before, where can they find more, on and on.  Yixing answers his questions as best he can, but his mind is elsewhere, running over the preparations he needs to make.

He bids Chanyeol good night at his doorstep and immediately funnels the precious powder into a glass apothecary jar, stopping it up tightly to keep it fresh.  With that done, Yixing sets about preparing his home for his visitor.