Emmett doesn't really notice it at first. He doesn't notice how he starts heading to the Chantry first thing, always after service in hopes of catching the Brother when he isn't busy. He doesn't notice how he listens just a bit more intently to Sebastian than he does his friends, picking up the way the pitch and tone of his voice changes depending on the topic at hand or how he seems so much eager to get the day over with after he leaves.
It's Isabella who points it out, all friendly jokes and jeers but it's not laughter or even embarrassment that Emmett feels when she does. At first its slight confusion, a tickle of recognition but not quite getting it before it hits him harder than any maul. He can feel the color drain in his face, the cold dread seeping into his stomach as well as the worry that starts permeating the air from his friends. He mutters some half assed excuse before anyone can ask what's wrong and rushes off as if the Templars themselves were chasing him. He goes to Lowtown, but he doesn't go home, if you can call Gamlen's hovel that, nor did he go to the Hanged Man. Instead he squeezed himself into a small corner off to the side, hidden and out of the way, and curled in on himself, fingers tangled in his hair.
He couldn't let this happen, he didn't WANT this to happen. A tryst in a barn, a roll in the sheets, these were things Emmett could deal with. He practically LIVED for the feeling of skin on skin, of lust burning so hot he thinks he'll catch fire but to be infatuated with someone? To actually want to just be with them, to hold them, to maybe even love them…that scared Emmett more than anything.
He'd dreamed of falling in love, once. Of being like mother and father, happy and together, but love was too easy to fake, too easy to confuse with lust. He remembered thinking he was in love once. There was a boy in the town they had lived in before Lothering, just a year older than him. He'd been handsome and strong, a popular topic amongst the young ladies and the envy of many of the young men. While Emmett could not see him his voice had left the mage stunned, heart pounding and cheeks flushed. He had been Emmett's first time with a man and, at the time, Emmett swore he'd be the only one.
So swept up in the passionate nights and false sweet words was the young man that he hadn't quite realized what was really going on until one Satinalia he had caught the other with one of the Sisters from the Chantry. When Emmett confronted him, he'd simply laughed and had stated, in a matter-of-fact tone, that Emmett was just a number like everyone else.
Emmett knew it was foolish to let such a trivial thing color his whole perception of love but it'd hurt worse than anything he could think of at the time and the stain it had left on his heart and colored his views on such things ever since. So to find himself like this now…No, it would pass. It had to. Sebastian wouldn't hurt him like that, at least not now, but there was no chance for anything to blossom between them anyway. Sebastian was a Brother of the Chantry and Emmett was an apostate mage. It was just not meant to be, the Maker made sure of that.