"Since when have either one of us wanted the easy option?" he throws back, to the first, another clear warning shot that this is not a distraction, just a different way to have a conversation. Gustavain certainly can ignore things with the best of them, set deeper problems aside to deal with at a later time. Absolutely everyone who has lived through the Calamity caries trauma, after all, and he more than most. He's not usually avoidant, though, not when he has other options.

What he often is, though, is at a loss for words-- not because he's not good with words, but because he feels so much that there are no words for. It's part of why he'd become a bard-- a desperate desire to try to capture that in poetry, in music when words failed. This, too, is a kind of art, a self-expression of the body rather than the mind or voice, more intimate than the battle dancing he'd also taken well to.

He straightens up from the most recent kiss and there's not really much in the way of foreplay to start with, but he's already working his clothes off with a deliberate, ritualistic air. Phillip's seen him do a version of this before, not always with sex on the brain, as though he could take off the mantle of Warrior of Light and leave it on the floor if he just unlaced his leather deliberately enough (or, occasionally, if he had it torn off of him.) Nevertheless, there's very clearly something sensual about it this time, slow and baring.