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Everyone knows to watch their wallets around Ezekiel. It takes all of two weeks for that to just become a fact of the Library - as intrinsic as ‘don’t interrupt Eve’s workouts’ and ‘talk quietly if Cassandra’s wearing sunglasses’ and ‘the warning signs on Jenkins’ lab door are not to be ignored’. ‘Watch your wallet around Ezekiel’.
In Ezekiel’s defense, he almost never takes anything. Maybe once or twice cash mysteriously disappeared. But credit cards, photos, the actual wallet itself - it’s all returned in one piece. Eventually.
Jacob though, is the only one who never...learns. Well, no, that’s not right.
He knows damn well Ezekiel lifts his wallet regularly. But he doesn’t move it to a front pocket like Eve - and yes, Ezekiel still could get it without her knowing, but he just knows the first time she catches him with also be the last - and he doesn’t switch to refusing to carry cash like Cassandra.
(Flynn never carried a wallet in the first place, and when he found that out, Ezekiel couldn’t help but wonder, not for the first time, how the man continued to function on wit and whim alone.)
Instead Jacob just...lets him.
Sure he puffs up and blusters every time he goes to find his wallet and it’s gone, but without fail, he just turns to Ezekiel and holds out his hand. And Ezekiel will grin at him, make a scene about not knowing what the hell he’s blabbering on about, and eventually the wallet will make its way back where it’s supposed to.
Eventually, he finds he’s only really ever aiming for Jacob’s wallet anymore. He’s the only one that’s still fun about it.
Until that stops too. Instead of raking his hands through his pockets or patting himself down like a loon before it occurs to him to look to his right, Jacob starts just...holding out his hand, whenever he needs to pay for something.
And Ezekiel would be insulted. He would. But every time Jacob does it, Ezekiel has it. And he gives it over without a word. And each time, Jacob shoots him this look that Ezekiel would almost swear was...fond. Like it’s a...a joke. Between just the two of them.
And maybe the heat in his chest, curling warm and happy every time Jacob smiles at him as he hands over his wallet, is stupid, but so what. It’s his and he’s keeping it.
He almost doesn’t notice the flower at all. It’s a little thing, white petals clean but crinkled, yellow center muzzy and scrunched. It falls out from between the folds of the wallet as Ezekiel’s picking through it to see if Jacob actually remembered to get new credit cards like he said he was going to do last month.
When he does notice it, he blinks at it where it’s landed on the ground by his feet. A weird thing to just be falling out of wallets, now, isn’t it?
But he just shrugs, scoops it up and pockets it. If Jacob wants it back, he can ask.
Ezekiel couldn’t tell you when he started nicking things besides Jacob’s wallet.
(Actually, he could. But he’s trying to retain some dignity here alright?)
But, just like the wallet that’s become their own little back and forth joke, everything else is just...easy. Easy and fun.
Jacob’s jacket is one of the first. Bloody fool leaves it hanging on his desk chair almost every day - and in most cases, forgets to grab it before they all go tumbling through the back door.
So it’s pathetically easy, as him, Jacob and Cassandra are headed for the Northern Isles, to snag it off the chair and slip it on. It’s a beaten, ugly old thing, all worn and broken in denim and stretched thin padding on the inside. But it’s warm, and a touch big in the shoulders, and he’s the only one not freezing his ass off when the wind hits them in the face as they stumble through the door.
It takes two hours for Jacob to actually notice just what Ezekiel’s wearing, and to his credit, he tries to scowl and grumble, but Ezekiel can see the uptick at the corner of his lips. And he doesn’t ask for it back.
After that, anything on Jacob’s desk is free game. Keys, laptop, coffee mug, jacket...all of them get nicked one time or another, and eventually Jacob stops looking around for them and instead starts marching straight to Ezekiel.
And each and every time, he tries to look grumpy - Ezekiel will give him credit where credit is due. If he didn’t already know the cowboy so well, he may even buy it. But there’s the crinkles around his eyes that can’t hide a smile he wants to show and a rough scrape to his voice that’s a tell-tale sign he wants to laugh.
(And maybe, just maybe, Ezekiel should examine why he knows those signs so well. But, hell, he caught himself looking within the first month. This really isn’t all that much of a surprise. And that heat, curled in his chest? It’s just gotten heavier, settling beneath his ribs and making something goofy happen with his heart with each smile. He’s a goner. It’s fine.)
He almost crushes the second flower.
He’s wearing Jacob’s jacket again - a cracked leather one this time, that vaguely smells of clean hay and dirt and when Jacob found time to go visit Slayton Ezekiel will never know - hanging around the Annex because they haven’t had a case in a week and Cassandra’s geeking out with Jenkins in his lab and Eve’s punching something and Jacob is...actually, he doesn’t know where Jacob is. Cowboy went back into the stacks muttering about hagstones and that was the last Ezekiel had seen of him in an hour.
Point was. He was bored. And grabbing the jacket to see how long it would take Jacob to notice when he came back this time was at least something to do.
He has his hands shoved in the pockets, pulling the jacket closer around him, when his fingers brush something soft and brittle in one and he almost yanks his hand back because weird.
When he actually gets up the nerve to go after whatever weird thing is in the pocket, what he pulls out is...well, a flower. A little white-petaled, yellow-centered daisy, bright in color and only a little rough for wear.
He frowns at it, something vaguely familiar about it, before he shrugs and tucks it away in his own pocket.
It keeps happening.
Three surprisingly well-kept daisies fall out of a book he grabs from Jacob’s desk.
When he goes to steal with just-filled coffee mug Jacob leaves unattended, he finds a larger one, it’s stem carefully wrapped around the handle.
Another one falls out of the wallet he just liberated.
(And then he remembers the first one, and has to kick himself for taking that long, but it’s just...it’s odd.)
Jacob doesn’t say anything about them. Never asks for them back, or where they went. Instead, he just smiles and asks for the book back. Or if Ezekiel could fill up the coffee mug again when he’s done. Or if he could have his jacket back please (that one’s a no. He’s keeping the dang jacket this time.)
It’s almost like it becomes another little game between them. Just for them.
Now, instead of just grabbing things off Jacob’s desk or person, he tries to guess where the daisy would be this time. Where Jacob would’ve hidden one. Nine times out of ten he gets it right, and feels ridiculously proud of himself for it. And that one time he misses, every once in awhile, without fail, he’ll eventually find a daisy waiting for him on his desk.
Ezekiel doesn’t know whether to take that as a challenge or a sweet-faced apology, but honestly, he doesn’t mind either way. It’s all part of the fun.
There’s one hiccup that stands out to Ezekiel - one that makes his heart thump a little harder, and makes the glimmer settled behind his ribs flare.
It’s a rough week, all around. Him, Jacob and Cassandra are split up continuously, travelling across the world to cover everything that decided to crop up. Eve and Flynn have to go out more than once, because there’s just too many artifacts popping up at once. If they make it back to the Annex at all before another case, it’s late at night, and the glow of the low lights hurts their eyes and all they want to do is crash for a little while before heading out again.
By Sunday, they’re all dead on their feet, and Eve threatens them all with rather creative, partially nonsensical notions of violence should she see their faces around for the next two days.
Cassandra’s out the door before Eve’s even finished. Flynn’s whining at her that yes yes doom destruction can we go home and sleep. Jenkins had warned them of dire consequences should they interrupt him for anything less than a class-five apocalyptic event and then disappeared. And Jacob...Jacob was passed out on his desk. He’d gotten back first after their last foray, and had apparently been asleep since.
He didn’t look particularly comfortable, slumped over his desk like that, but Ezekiel was just calling it a win that he didn’t have his face pressed into a keyboard this time.
Rolling his eyes, he made his way over to drape the jacket he’d grabbed almost a week ago now over his shoulders, muttering insults about lazy cowboys far more affectionately than he’d ever admit to.
He almost didn’t see it.
Curled in Jacob’s hand, the stem of a daisy, dropped over the desk from where it was threatening to fall. It was bigger than any other one he’d left for Ezekiel to find, and Ezekiel couldn’t help but wonder if it was because the game had been put on hold for the week from hell.
Smiling fondly, he gently picked the flower from Jacob’s hand, cradling it close.
“Good night, cowboy,” he said to a still softly snoring Jacob, and slipped out the back door, resolutely ignoring the goofy smile on his face and the sparkling glitter where his heart should be.
The last flower...shouldn’t really be a surprise.
But it is. It definitely is.
Ezekiel’s...well, frustrated isn’t the right word. That would be dumb. It’s just a stupid game. And like the hell week two months back showed, real life took precedence.
So what if he hadn’t found another flower. In a week. So what if when he stole Jacob’s jackets the first thing he did was shove his hands in the pockets, or run his fingers over the lining. So what if he shook books out and wouldn’t touch an empty coffee mug. So what if, when he opened another empty wallet, he felt something in his chest clench.
So what. It was just a game.
And Jacob was busy with a new book. And they hadn’t had a case that took them longer than a day in weeks, so Ezekiel could understand if he wanted to give his all to the project before they got dragged away on another magical rollercoaster that lasted weeks.
It was fine.
And no, Cassandra, he wasn’t grumpier than usual, he was fine.
And he’d be even better if, whenever Jacob caught his eye, the man’s face didn’t break into this impossibly small but impossibly fond smile. If Ezekiel didn’t know Jacob like he did, he’d almost swear he was laughing at him. But the smile wasn’t quite right for it, as much as Ezekiel almost wanted it to be. Because at least then he could justifiably annoyed.
Instead he’s just. Confused.
He’s just slipping through the back door, ready to go home after a case - not a hard one, but wow was he out of practice scaling walls in the dark. He needed to get back on that. He didn’t come back with the artifact, but that’s because he’d managed to reseal the thing in its original home, and when he’d called Jenkins, they’d both agreed that was the best place for it for the time being. Who knew a lucky clover could cause so much trouble?
He almost doesn’t notice.
The Annex is low lit, like it normally is when everyone else has gone home for the night. The only sound is the faint hum of magic that’s always there, and the rustling of pages coming from the corner.
A glance over shows Jacob, still dealing with the same stack of books Ezekiel had seen him pull that morning before he left. Still neck deep in his book project.
He’s about to say something - a ‘hello’, a ‘goodbye’, a snarky quip about doing all the work around here, he doesn’t know, because when Jacob glances up, he sees it.
Bright white petals, a burst of yellow at the center. Tucked behind Jacob’s ear.
He doesn’t know what his face is doing in that moment, but he’s pretty sure he looks ridiculous. It feels like a smile. But for all he knows, his mouth is hanging open.
Either way, he’s across the Annex faster than Jacob expected apparently, if the short, startled laugh is anything to go by.
He doesn’t even say anything when Ezekiel pushes his research out of the way so he can firmly take up the space between Jacob and the desk.
Ezekiel wants to swat at him for making him wait the previous week. Wants to ask why it took so long in the first place. Wants to chase that laugh that’s still crinkling the corners of Jacob’s eyes.
Instead, he takes in the soft smile aimed up at him, incredibly fond and amused and bright. And Ezekiel does the only thing he can do. He plucks the flower from its place, twirling it between his fingers for a moment.
The kiss Ezekiel presses to Jacob’s mouth is soft, all gentled glitter and sparkling sweet. Short too, because Jacob’s laughing again, and Ezekiel can’t help but join in this time.
“This the part where I say something cheesy about stealing your heart along with your wallet, finally?” Ezekiel asks into the quiet a couple minutes later, the two of them still so close together, watching the daisy twirl in his fingers.
“Cheesy, maybe, but true.”
And the sparks in Ezekiel’s ribs burn bright and hot and he doesn’t care if they’re both smiling too hard for it to work, he has to kiss him again.