[ He looks over, chest lifting and falling a little rapidly with his breath, to make sure that Verso's paying attention to the hit that's about to come his way... only to give the man a faintly exasperated glance when it's immediately clear that Verso's focus has been distracted by other things. He feels that heated, almost possessive glance like it's a hand skating over his skin, watching as Verso's eyes lower and linger and finally drag their slow way up again.
The eyeroll he sends Verso's way would probably land more solidly if his own glance weren't constantly trying to trail its way down along Verso's own bared chest, the shirt that he hadn't quite managed to unbutton hanging off him in rakish folds, just begging for hands to slip under it and slide over the pale warm skin and firm muscle beneath. He's impossibly, wrenchingly beautiful, beautiful in a way that aches deep inside Gustave's own chest. Even the violence he wields is beautiful in its own way, the same way a terrible bolt of lightning or destructive wave might be. All that power, coalesced into one perfect technique and unleashed with absolute precision.
And worst of all is that smirk, twinkling in Verso's impossibly clear eyes, crinkling the corners as he leans close, all but actually bragging. Gustave meets that smirk with a pair of raised eyebrows, one quirking a little higher than the other, but waits, and watches, as instructed.
— And then Verso does something... impossible.
This time, when he leaps spinning into the air, a whirlwind of loose shirt and ruffled waves of his hair and the flex and release of muscles moving smoothly beneath his skin, something... new happens, something Gustave has never seen or felt before. Chroma is sucked through the air in a rush, carrying color and light with it like Verso has become a tiny spinning black hole — he's manipulating it somehow, pure chroma from the environment around them, not from the Nevron or from an expeditioner, how is he doing that? — and drives it along with his sword into the hapless Cruler.
There's no withstanding a blow like that, not from a Nevron of this level. The thing dissipates and dies, drifting into a cloud of chroma Gustave can't even bring himself to feel frustrated about not being able to collect with the lumina converter, because light and warmth and color are filtering back into the world like that strike never happened.
He stares at Verso, barely even registering that smirk, the one that says see? and go ahead, tell me how amazing that was.
It was amazing. But that's not what bursts out of Gustave the second he finds words again. ]
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The eyeroll he sends Verso's way would probably land more solidly if his own glance weren't constantly trying to trail its way down along Verso's own bared chest, the shirt that he hadn't quite managed to unbutton hanging off him in rakish folds, just begging for hands to slip under it and slide over the pale warm skin and firm muscle beneath. He's impossibly, wrenchingly beautiful, beautiful in a way that aches deep inside Gustave's own chest. Even the violence he wields is beautiful in its own way, the same way a terrible bolt of lightning or destructive wave might be. All that power, coalesced into one perfect technique and unleashed with absolute precision.
And worst of all is that smirk, twinkling in Verso's impossibly clear eyes, crinkling the corners as he leans close, all but actually bragging. Gustave meets that smirk with a pair of raised eyebrows, one quirking a little higher than the other, but waits, and watches, as instructed.
— And then Verso does something... impossible.
This time, when he leaps spinning into the air, a whirlwind of loose shirt and ruffled waves of his hair and the flex and release of muscles moving smoothly beneath his skin, something... new happens, something Gustave has never seen or felt before. Chroma is sucked through the air in a rush, carrying color and light with it like Verso has become a tiny spinning black hole — he's manipulating it somehow, pure chroma from the environment around them, not from the Nevron or from an expeditioner, how is he doing that? — and drives it along with his sword into the hapless Cruler.
There's no withstanding a blow like that, not from a Nevron of this level. The thing dissipates and dies, drifting into a cloud of chroma Gustave can't even bring himself to feel frustrated about not being able to collect with the lumina converter, because light and warmth and color are filtering back into the world like that strike never happened.
He stares at Verso, barely even registering that smirk, the one that says see? and go ahead, tell me how amazing that was.
It was amazing. But that's not what bursts out of Gustave the second he finds words again. ]
What was—
How did you— how did you do that?