Gold And Sapphires (JJBA)

Web of Porcelain

Among the Joestars, in this gathering, there's a distinct kind of feeling that envelops Giorno's being. The feeling curls itself around him, coils in his heart so that it skips beat and feels painfully tight, and the feeling wraps around his mind, too. Here, in this room, with sounds of laughter and the feeling of belonging—Giorno feels his thoughts race along; thinking frantically about just what to do in this unfamiliar scene, while simultaneously slowing to a languid pace...feeling almost safe.

There are a lot of feelings, but he thinks the one that he's feeling is the sensation of acceptance.

Acceptance is a concept that seems strange and unfamiliar; incomprehensible in a way that's hard to explain. Acceptance, it rings bells, of course. It rings notions of large overpowering rooms in which he, in all his plated gold, would rise to a stand and offer his hand and the old rulers would be on their knees and they'd accept him as their monarch.

But that's not really him, Giorno thinks. Italy had accepted an image—an idolized statue, a marble David—they'd never...he doesn't think they ever accepted him.

(But that is him, isn't it? Giorno Giovanna is forged of flawless gold.)

At the thought, a kind of unease builds up from his core—the idea that he isn't perfect, isn't an unshakable David—he doesn't want to think about it. All that matters now is that there's something different between the Giorno that Italy had accepted and the Giorno that this family seems to have accepted.

And there's something in the way he's been accepted here and now that makes Giorno feel like he's flying, it's something exhilarating, something that grows all kinds of light and bursting feelings up in him.

But there's something wrong.

Looking over the room, he sees a family. He sees a family, and somewhere in him, he knows that he's been accepted into this small, tightly knit, complicated group. But Giorno's never had anything like this, it's all...new, and unfamiliar, and he feels like every step he takes into this scene with leave burns and dig up buried scars. He feels like an intruder in a home that isn't his.

There's so much here that he just doesn't know, has never been able to know, and—

(Haruno is terrified of messing it all up,)

—and there are so many dynamics that he feels worlds away from understanding. Giorno won't call it fear, but he feels his stomach churn at the thought of trying to navigate waters like these—dipping a toe in would disturb some kind of delicate web that he simply can't read.

Jotaro's words rustle at the back of his memory; 'You can be afraid, you know', and Giorno ends up stewing on them for longer than he thinks he should have, but eventually they get pushed aside—(they never fully disappear)—by the tide of attempting to keep up with every conversation in the room; a task that's practically impossible. Not only has everyone formed their own, constantly changing, groups (of which Giorno almost seems to be the center of), but many people seem to be juggling a conversation or two at once. It's overwhelming.

It's overwhelming, but not in the kind of way that Diavolo was overwhelming—not in a bad way. No, it's overwhelming in some other way that Giorno's still trying to figure out. It's overwhelming in a way that makes the blonde feel like he's floating, or melting.

The whole scene is overwhelming in a way that makes Giorno almost forget he was nervous in the first place.

But Giorno is still on edge—hesitant to leave that familiar edge. He's still dimes-to-daggers, on autopilot to flip that switch on the slightest sign of perceived danger. And that perceived danger comes, it isn't big, but it's big enough. By all means, it's nothing big at all. But everything here has been so completely and unexpectedly good, that something that he had originally expected morphs into something startling.