Prison Cells, a Fairy Tail fanfic
Pairing: Midnight x Angel

She thinks it might have been the prison. The time when they only had each other to talk to, trapped in their respective cells, apart from every other prisoner.

For the first months after their re-capture, they had kept silent, and might as well have been ignoring each other.
Until one day She grew bored of the ever-lasting silence and asked him a question.

"Why do you like to sleep so much?"

She didn't get an answer immediately. After, like, ten seconds, however:

"Please let me sleep"

He had always been so polite, but she could feel the implied sentence.

She huffed. "Okay then, fuck you too."

She didn't try again.
-

Three days later, she got her answer.

"It's just comforting."

She perked up at the sound of his voice. "Huh?"

She looked over to the man, and she almost believed, by his sleeping form and his closed eyes, that he only talked in his sleep. It happened before anyway.

However, she was proved wrong when he cracked one of his crimson eyes open, and talked again.

"Sleeping. I love it because it's comforting."

"You could have told me that three days ago", she mumbled, annoyed. He ignored her.
-

They would only talk once or twice a week, to fight the boredom. At this point, everything was better than staring at the grayish stone walls of their prison cells.

It was awkward at first, since they rarely interacted back in the days where they were a guild - He was always asleep, and she never possessed great social skills. So...

"I don't really know, but... I suspect it started with the Tower." he spoke, and she listened. He rarely, if not never, opened up to anyone before. "All those sleepless nights. I really missed it, so it was the first thing I did when Brain broke us out."

She nodded, and he sighed. Silence filled the basement once again.
-

"Midnight?"
"Hmm?"
"What's your favourite color?"

She swore she actually heard crickets.

"... Excuse me?"
"You heard me." she retorted, a bit embarrassed.
"You know you're weird, right?"
"Alright then forget i-"
"Yellow."

Her eyes widened. First of all because wow he actually answered and secondo, well...

"B-but you're an emo!"

He wasn't done surprising her, though, because she heard him laugh. Yes, laugh. And it was... disturbing. No, but him? Laughing?

The weirdest thing about this was that she actually thought about how his laugh sounded like once. Then again, she also wondered if Cobra ever kissed his snake by accident (she was bored), a thought that the Dragon Slayer didn't quite appreciate.

But she never imagined she'd actually get to hear it.

And it wasn't that weird, maniac laugh she imagined. It was... sweet. Higher than his deep chuckles.

It sounded like crystals.
And she needed to lie down.
-

Random little questions soon evolved into talks that would lead to deep thinking, and revelations.

"Do you remember your parents?"

He stiffened, and she regretted asking immediately.

"I'm sorry, forget I asked-"

"It's alright", he cut her off, "I.. don't mind." he took a big breath. "I never knew my parents. I grew up in an orphanage. It was... better than the Tower, I guess."

Angel extended her arm, almost as to touch him, before realizing what she was doing (she couldn't have done it anyway) and retracted it. She coughed awkwardly.

"I... had a sister. And parents, of course, but my sister was everything to me."

She felt the tears coming up.

"B-but then they attacked, a-and I don't even know if she's alive..."

A sob escaped her unvolunteerly. Silence filled the area once again until...

"... I'm sorry, I... didn't know."

She wiped the few tears streaming down her face, and smiled.

"Of course you didn't. Idiot."

He smirked, and she giggled. Midnight was definitely been better company than she had thought he would be.

Bless those council bastard for putting them both in the same section.
-

When the guards walked through the door on this particular night, they were escorting a very familiar silhouette, shock didn't even represent what she was feeling.

"Cobra? WHAT THE HELL?"

He snickered. "Sorry, I apparently have dragons to take care of. Be right back."

He shot a quick look at the sleeping Midnight, and mumbled something loud enough for Angel to hear the words "always snoozing, that bastard". She grinned like a Cheshire cat. Oh, if only he knew.
-

Weeks became months, and conversation with her fellow comrade became way more than just distractions.

She took a liking to their daily chats. And, she was in denial, but she took a liking to him in the process.
-

She still remembered, to this day, almost every little talk they had. But some were just meant to stand out.

"Macbeth."
"Huh?"
"My name's Macbeth."

She stared at him. 1...2...3...4...5... Her eyes widening ever second.

"Macbeth." She finally said. Like she was trying to wrap her head around that new piece of information.
"Yeah."
"Macbeth..." She said again, this time, testing. "I like it. Very poetic."

She thought for ten seconds or so, before finally waving her hand at her now confused friend.

Nice to meet you Macbeth, my name is Sorano."
-

Then... That happened.

She was telling him about her adventures with her little sister back then, and between a pause he pronounced those exact same words that turned her world upside-down:

"You should smile like that more often. It suits you well, you look like an angel."

And then it all came crashing down. And she realized. And she couldn't deny it nor fight it anymore.
-

"I think I love you and it terrifies me."

He froze immediately, crimson eyes widening, looking at her like she just said the weirdest thing in the world (which is probably the case here).

She just wanted to disappear. To sink into the ground. Because oh god did she seriously just blurted that out?

She hid her face deep into her hands and-

"Well then, I guess the feeling is mutual after all."

She looked up. Slowly. And when she gazed into his eyes, he gave her that soft smile. And if there hadn't been any barriers between them, she just might had jumped on him.

Their conversations were never the same again.
-

She could hardly believe it.

They were free. At least that's what the soldier said when he unlocked their cells and guided them to the room where Cobra was.

During their walk, Midnight slowly took her hand, squeezed it, and entertwined their fingers together. He gave her a small smile. And she felt those butterflies for yet another time.

After all this time, she literally craved for the physical contact.

When they arrived, the dragon slayer had that cheeky grin plastered on his face. A grin that soon turned into a "o" of surprise as his eyes darted from Angel to Midnight.

"Oh."
Oh indeed, yes.

Well that didn't go like expected.
-

She found him sitting around the fire that night, plunged into his thoughts. She sat beside him, and laid her head on his left shoulder now tattooed with the symbol of their new affiliation. He wrapped his arm around her waist.

It was odd to touch eachother like this, but after all those months spent in jail they just needed it. Because everything felt so... surreal.

"I thought you'd be sleeping by now." she said quietly, rubbing his leg in circles of her fingers. He chuckled. "I think I have my dose of sleep for a little while."

She grinned. She loved him so much. And she just needed to show him.

So she spun him, took his face in her hands and brought her lips on his violently. Something he immediately responded to.

On this night, there were no more bars between them and their prison cells.

Now they just had to make up for lost time.