Summary: Ezekiel didn't do love, not romantic love, and Jake's seemingly endless teasing about Cindy combined with the recent kiss was just too much. He had reached his breaking point. "I'm aro-ace, alright!?" Set after 3x07.
Jake wouldn't let go of the Cindy thing. It was getting annoying. Ezekiel didn't do love, not romantic love, and Jake's teasing combined with the recent kiss was just too much.
"Enough, mate!" Ezekiel shouted at Jake in the thankfully empty kitchen. Jake had unfairly ambushed him while he had been making a grilled cheese sandwich. His friend kept trying to get him to admit his "true feelings" and call Cindy to take her out on a date. Jake wouldn't quit suggesting restaurants and what food to order and what wine worked best with what dishes and apparently he had an "in" at this amazing brewpub in Portland he wouldn't shut up about. Ezekiel had reached his breaking point.
He abandoned his half assembled sandwich, turned to Jake and said with more force than he had intended, "I'm aro-ace, alright!?"
Jake blinked. "Ah, is that some kind of computer thing?"
Ezekiel facepalmed before regaining his composure. A computer thing? Really? That is adorable. "No, it's a I-don't-do-romantic-relationships-or-sex thing."
"Hang on," Jake said holding up a hand, palm out and everything. "You're saying you don't have sex...ever?"
Ezekiel shrugged. "I can take it or leave it. I prefer to leave it."
"Huh." Jake had the same look on his face he got whenever he discovered an ancient inscription that he couldn't understand without some serious researching and many "fun" hours of decoding. "Alright," he finally said with a nod. A pause. Then he questioned, "No relationships at all?"
"I have relationships, but they stay platonic like us. No hand holding," he ticked off each new item with a finger, "cuddling, kissing or sex."
"Huh," Jake said again.
As a general rule, Ezekiel doesn't tell people. He's not ashamed-he's awesome and every part of him, including his sexuality, is awesome-but not everyone sees it that way. His old handler at MI6 and a few old friends knew and that was it. The aro-ace conversation doesn't always go well. He's lost some people he thought had been his friends that way.
He loves these people that he's picked as his family. It wasn't until he died for them over and over again in that stupid video game that he realized the true depth of his love for them. He can steal anything in the world, but he could never steal that perfect thing that would finally fill the void inside him. He had kept relentlessly trying, but no priceless item or daring heist could ever make him feel complete.
At one point, he had questioned whether his sexuality was the culprit behind never feeling whole. He had first discovered what asexuality was when he was leisurely wandering around a museum while tracking the guards movements for an upcoming heist (a little side project he had been working on during his MI6 days). He had been hopelessly bored and found himself eavesdropping on a conversation between a mother and daughter. Until that moment, Ezekiel hadn't realized people could live their whole lives never wanting sex and there was even a word for it-asexual.
Sex was never something he cared much about. Ezekiel had been an outcast growing up so the opportunity to have sex simply never arose. After his mom di-after he took to stealing as a career, he moved around the world as he pleased. He had lived for the thrill of the heist. He hadn't wasted time trying to make friends or sleep with anyone.
In fact, the first time he slept with someone had been when he was still with MI6. He had met a girl (Emily Turner) while working a case. She was into him, he thought she was nice, his partner urged him to go for it, and Ezekiel figured why not. The sex had been alright. Emily seemed to enjoy herself and Ezekiel had a nice time, but he found sex as a whole to be overrated and didn't understand what all the hype was about.
After he first heard of asexuality, he extensively researched it and proudly labeled himself aro-ace.
Discovering he was asexual and aromantic brought clarity to his meh attitude towards sex and put past interactions with his partners into perspective. Ezekiel had never much enjoyed cuddling on a couch with anyone. He used to berate himself for not being happy to have a beautiful woman held in his arms or for a gorgeous guy to lay his head on his shoulder. It just wasn't for him. Kissing wasn't for him either. It always felt like an obligation he had to perform in order to be a good boyfriend. No matter how light or intense the kiss, no matter male or female, he never felt that spark or pleasure that movies always showcased. He liked making his partners happy so if they wanted to cuddle, snog or have sex then he went along with it, but it wasn't something he overly enjoyed himself. Ezekiel would much rather hang out and watch tv or play video games with someone he cared about.
Ezekiel had felt like something was missing inside himself for so long that he assumed his particular attitude towards sex, cuddling and snogging was just another manifestation of that. It wasn't until he had a label for it that he realized that wasn't the case at all. He liked having the proper words at the ready to easily communicate what he was, but it also made him realize his sexuality was never the cause to that dreaded empty feeling. Ezekiel had feared he would never fill the abyss in his soul. Then he got stuck in that bloody video game.
He was forced to watch his friends die over and over and over again. No matter what he did he couldn't save them. It's nothing like slowly losing your sanity and will to live to make you question how you even came to be in such a hopeless situation. Taking stock of every bad decision that brought him to his own personal hell, Ezekiel had been shocked to discover he no longer felt empty inside. No, in place of the expected emptiness was now love. He, Ezekiel Jones, had found love. Who knew love, and not stolen objects, would be the elusive thing to finally make the greatest thief in the world feel whole? Friends he loved so fiercely he would willingly die for was the missing component that he had been living without for so long.
Ezekiel had been reluctant to tell his friends-his family-about his sexuality because he was terrified of that cold, empty feeling returning if they rejected him. It's why he could never outright tell them how important they were to him, he couldn't risk losing them. Instead he tried to show them he was a good librarian and worthy of their time and love.
It was alright if his fellow librarians, guardian and Jenkins didn't love him back. Ezekiel may have been awesome, but they were way out of his league. He didn't need to be loved back to love them, but he didn't know if he could survive the confirmation that they saw nothing in him worth loving. So he never brought up his sexuality and let them assume he was simply straight-until now that is.
Ezekiel kept waiting for the other shoe to drop from his aro-ace reveal, but Jake had remained silent. He cocked a skeptical eyebrow in disbelief and asked his friend, "That's it?"
"I'll stop teasing you about Cindy. I saw it made you uncomfortable and I kept harping on you anyway." His southern accent started to emerge the more sincere he became. "I'm sorry, Ezekiel. If I do anything that makes you uncomfortable you let me know and I'll knock it off. Alright?"
"Alright?" This conversation was not going as he expected. Great, now Ezekiel felt bad for underestimating his friend and expecting to be teased, asked a bunch of annoying questions, and braced for at least one standard plant or robot comment.
Jake nodded. "Good." He fidgeted then darted forward so quickly Ezekiel feared he would receive a fist to the face, but instead he found himself in a hug. Jake was hugging him. "Thank you for telling me."
"Sure, mate." Ezekiel awkwardly patted the other man's back.
Jake let him go and took a several steps back. He pointed his thumb behind him towards the doorway. "I'm gonna…"
"Yeah and I'm gonna…" Ezekiel gestured to his half-made sandwich.
That was enough bonding for one day. Jake left to go back to his old books, or whatever it was he did for fun around here, and Ezekiel went back to his lunch.
The next day he walked by Jake's workstation and saw books about asexuality and aromanticism among his old boring foreign language books. Yeah, Ezekiel definitely picked well when he decided to love these people.
A/N: My headcanon is Ezekiel is aro-ace, it seems to perfectly fit his character in my eyes. The forehead kiss in 3x07 inspired me to write an aro-ace Ezekiel episode tag. I haven't written anything in a long time and haven't posted anything even longer so sorry if my first Librarian fic felt off at all (I'm still getting a hang of the characters and writing again).
I'm aro-ace and it's a little scary to write about a fellow aro-ace and share it with the world when any aro-ace representation is so dear to me. Thank you every single person who has written an ace/aro character in a fic and shared it-it's given me the courage to do the same. I'm still very nervous about sharing this, though, and hope I did Ezekiel justice.