Title: Retreat
Pairing: Unrequited Elmont/Camus
Rating: PG
Word Count: 210
Summary: White flags all around.
Camus is pale and small and demure – all the qualities that Elmont despises in a woman.
It's the eyes that get him.
Wide and earnest and soulful, they catch him off-guard every time, no matter how often Camus blinks up in bleary confusion and doe-like fear. And though he burns to be otherwise, Elmont is a farmboy at heart. It's in his nature to take home strays and mend their hurts. Is it so unexpected then, that he can't resist?
Camus is loving and sweet and domestic – all the things that Elmont could ever hope for in a wife. But there's a difference between being feminine and being female, and the gap has never seemed so cavernous.
He's tried to rein his instincts, to tell himself it's a passing craze come over him. It isn't, and Camus knows – it's obvious from the way he stammers and flinches and makes his excuses. It doesn't take an empath, after all.
So Elmont resigns himself to watching from a distance, haunting the library and feeding his ambition until his mind is filled with nothing. He doesn't visit Camus anymore. The potted plants in his room have all but withered.
Not too far away, another heart-broken boy withdraws into his dome of wildflower dreams.
END