"Looks like we'll be trapped for a while…" Jake announced in resignation, stepping away from the wall. Ezekiel swallowed thickly, and continued to search for any fissures or signs of weakness in the stone. They were on a mission fighting some ancient cult, that worshipped some bad thing and used some bad artifact, and all that jazz. It didn't matter to him right now enough to remember the details.
"No, we have to get out. There's always some trick or something, we can find it. Ezekiel Jones doesn't lose to some magical trap door!" He announced, voice a little tight as he whirled around desperately, searching for something, anything. His breathing picked up pace as he surged forward and felt all over the walls of the tiny, nondescript stone chamber. The walls appeared to be smooth, the ceiling and floor were flat, and there was no sign of the door that had trapped them in here. Or any sign of some trigger to activate it. Ezekiel felt panic well up in him as he made his way around the room, and started to search along the floor on his hands and knees.
"Okay, for one thing, we've really got to stop with the third person thing, dude. For another, I already looked, we both looked, now you're just wasting our oxygen." Jake hissed at him. Ezekiel froze, realization dawning on him. They were trapped, there was no way out, in a tiny room that didn't seem to have any sort of vents. They were going to suffocate. In a tiny room. Trapped.
Ezekiel suddenly felt cold, and the darkness at the edge of his vision started to move in. His heart was pounding against his ribcage. He jumped to his feet and slammed his fist into the wall, a couple of times, before there were hands pulling him back. He struggled as wildly against them as he did against the room.
"We have to get out, let me go, let me-" His anxious words were cut off by a voice in his ear.
"Jones! Snap out of it, man!" Jake exclaimed. Suddenly, the hands holding him whirled him around, on still holding his wrist. He was face to face with the very concerned face of Jacob Stone. But that didn't matter, because the walls felt like they were getting even closer and he had to-
"Ezekiel! Look at me, not the damned room." Jake's voice commanded, and Ezekiel snapped to stare at him again.
"Are you claustrophobic?" Jake asked, a look of realization and worry on his features. Ezekiel felt like he was moving a mile a minute, and yet he was going too slowly.
"What? No, that doesn't- shit, Jake, we have to get out!" Ezekiel turned his gaze back towards those horrible smooth walls. Why didn't he understand? Everything was falling down on them and his skin was crawling, his heart stammering and his mind racing. Jake clenched his jaw and reached the hand that wasn't holding his wrist to cup Ezekiel's jaw, drawing his face back towards the other man.
"Jones, Jones, look at me. Don't look at the room, it doesn't matter. Just look at me. It's just you and me, okay, buddy? It's just you and me, right here, nothing else. And soon Eve, Cassandra and Flynn will be here, and we'll all go back to the Annex, and we'll watch a movie in the theater. Your pick." Jake's voice was insistent, but soothing. Impeccably calm. Ezekiel swallowed past the lump in his throat, and looked down at Jake's chest instead of into his eyes. He always wore scarfs, what kind of cowboy wore scarfs? Ezekiel reached a hand out and buried it in Jake's jacket, while taking a step forward. There wasn't much space between them now, but amazingly, it didn't bother him. Jake still had a hand cupping his face, and it was warm. Warm, and callused from work. But not imposing.
Ezekiel zeroed in on whatever was between them, letting the pressure and the darkness at the edge of his vision blur away. He stared at the frays on Jake's faded red scarf, mind narrowed in on every place they were touching and every place they weren't, instead of the world around them.
And if that's how the others found them an hour later, after defeating the bad guy and opening the secret door- well, Eve stopped the other two from mentioning it.