Treasure

Bait for the bigger fish

A key rattled in the hole of the door, waking the captive from his confusing doze and boot steps heavily patted on the wooden floor, lining towards him.

Yunho lifted his swollen face, gazing upon the blurry figures and a sigh slipped past his crusty lips, wearily seeing the stranger with a silver mask, skipping his way towards him, and chirped.

"Mate! Had a beautiful sleep?"

"More like had a beautiful time awake," Yunho mumbled, coughing the bloody taste out of his throat. 

"Good heavens, they didn't feed you?" Softly holding the latter's face, the unknown being said, checking the damages that had stopped bleeding. "They even hit you? Perhaps it's alright since you are just a bait for the bigger fish. We just need you alive somehow till Hongjoong come and save you."

His waistcoat floated as he happily fantasized about the beautiful dream, taking circles around the pirate. "Well, I doubt if he would save you... I'll see you around."
The boy closed his eyes from the surroundings, diving into darkness and letting his exhausted legs to be limp and the chains to hold him up.

What might Mingi be doing right now?

Possibly must be watching far away with a spyglass, playfully messing with the captain and laughing with the rest of the crewmates.

Yunho missed him. That beautiful smile he flashes, handsome and charming, and the smell of the warm sea of the day and the tanned skin under the brilliant sun.

But he had been lying to himself about Mingi. That Mingi was just a friend him when his heart would flip at a single touch of fingers. He fabricated the feeling that churned in his stomach and the yearning need for love and attention with a grin, best he could attempt.

Yunho neglected the chances he had to admit his love towards the other and convince himself to believe that Mingi was, as usual, just a crewmate.

He remembered that one time, a moment impossible to forget, with Mingi.

The sun had always been a coward against the cold at the top of the world, hiding behind in a pile of clouds and the greyness, lazily allowing its rays to fall upon the ice.

His fingers were freezing as he puffed a smoke of a breath in front of him and gulped. His skin was burnt with the cold, dehydrated and numb. But a coat fell over his shoulders, firmly and gently, and it smelled nice and cosy.

Mingi stood behind him, hair faded by the salty wind into a shade of copper brown, and his arms lay over his chest crossed. "Don't catch a cold, Yunho."

He only nodded in response, unknowingly taking a step back to lie close to the warmth behind him and it was embarrassing how Mingi chuckled and wrapped his arms around. "Better?"

Yunho hummed and rested there for a while until he was asked something. "Do you like me, Yunho?"

Panic began to spill in his mind and couldn't help but feel the need to break away from the embrace and run away. It scared him of the truth he knew like the back of his hand. He cleared his throat. "Mingi, you have always been a good friend to me. Why wouldn't I like you?"

"A good friend?" The other echoed and Yunho gulped with a nod.

"Of course. You were there for me and it's enough for you to be a really good friend of mine."

Oh my, how much he wished he confessed at that time, even if it was to get rejected. But now if he died that would be such regret and a burden. But he feared that Hongjoong would come for him, to save him, he was too kind for his good at times...