Gold And Sapphires (JJBA)

Baby I'm a Star

Giorno knows that. He doesn't need help knowing that. His skin crawls, bristles. He can take what he wants, he is capable—but there is no ill-intent seeping through Jotaro's frame. There is no ill-intent, even if there are undertones of babying. Giorno doesn't need that, but it's positively useless dwell.

"Of course," Giorno smiles, but it's practiced and forced.

...How had Jotaro noticed anyhow? Had Giorno been sending out signs? Did it show in his face, a twitch of his fingers? He hadn't noticed anything. Perhaps Jotaro is just perceptive? Nononono—that's not the issue. He shouldn't been sending any signals—

"C'mon," says Jolyne, and she's talking to him, "It's your turn."

Giorno blinks. "Of course," he smiles. Takes the dice, rolls, collects his two hundred, passes them on.

Just now, he had blinked out, drifted off, stopped paying attention, He's paid so dearly for his time, fought so viciously for his security, measured his faces and played his cards and he can't compromise that with blink-and-you'll-lose-it. He needs to seize these moments; grip them until he's melded them into his shape, played them into his palm. Giorno Giovanna can't be anything less than perfect, everywhere, but especially here.

He's lost his grip so many times already tonight, slipped into something lesser. It can't happen again.

(Haruno always, always let time drag on around him. Let himself sink in useless misery. And he can't do that, not here, not now—)

So he doesn't.

Shizuka is next to bankrupt, then Jotaro, then Lisa Lisa, until it's just him and Joseph. Figures, since the old man is one of the most successful real-estate investors in the whole of Northeast America. There is...an unexpected delight to winning against him. Something that tugs Giorno's face into its first real smile since the cookie-bowl-comment. This smile has sharp, gleaming edges.

Joseph loses in good faith, proclaims he was only playing half-strength, but there's no heat in it. And, Giorno notices (how could he not?)—He's looking at him. Strange expression, something nostalgic and faraway.

Giorno's skin pricks needles and knives.

(Haruno tries so hard to make himself invisible.)

There are locusts beneath his skin, wasps in his veins, leeches nesting worries into Giorno's mind. Think, rationalize, study. It can't be anything too bad. But then again, Giorno's smile had edges, sharp and pointed. He never knew Dio, but he imagines the creature's smile might not have been too much different. And Giorno thinks that this family doesn't mind too much, but there's still the possibility and he just wants to know what Joseph's thinking—

"You look like Jonathan," Joseph finally says, and Giorno feels the thrum quiet, only to rebound twice the volume.

"Oh," he says because he doesn't know what else to say.

Jonathan. The Englishman, Dio's nemesis, his...technically one of Giorno's biological fathers. Giorno has read a few scant sentences on him from the file given by the SPW foundation. Close friends with Robert E. O. Speedwagon, married to Erina Joestar...killed and body stolen by Dio Brando. Little more.

You look like Jonathan.

Jonathan died far before Joseph was born. Joseph shouldn't know his appearance. Meaning...there is at least one picture somewhere, he's sure of it. Something clenches in Giorno's chest—aches. Aches like years of speculation and hope and building a glass bridge of expectations that ends in the reveal of a bloody curtain and the shattering of every glass brick.