And that is also why he finds it hard to blame Hermes. To live in a perfect world, where only you believe it to be anything but, where only you seem to understand sadness. It's no wonder he looked to the stars for answers-- there was no one else who could give him any. Gustavain wasn't sure he wouldn't have done the same, or similar. And then to find that there was no hope anywhere, nothing out there but other failed hopes, nothing to learn, no answers to be found.

He would go mad.

He doesn't want other people to suffer, of course, but suffering is just a part of life for him, not an aberration, and it's somehow easier to deal with, he thinks, for it's communal-ness, for it's inevitability.

And all of this is too much, after everything, too emotionally intimate, and there's only one proper way to ease that pressure as far as he's concerned. So he lets his mouth curve into the smirk it wants to move into, though his eyes still say love more than lust,

"I do have to admit, I did enjoy how easy it was to have you so clearly aching for me, though... I barely had to do anything."