[Gold Experience doesn't seem to react very much. He was still staring at Giorno rather than Star, even after his own movement, focused and fervent and unblinking; when Star turns his smile on him, he lifts his head and meets his eyes without any significant change in expression.]

[But Giorno flinches. Jotaro said something about . . . being knocked over. This isn't that, it's more like - the sensation of being in the center of a frantic swarm of insects. But it's more than he's ever felt from Gold Experience at once before, except with Holly at Christmas.]

[What is it? It's a good thing and a bad thing - love, gratitude, a muted recognition of the fact that it's good to see Star smiling. Some of that might be his own, too; he isn't sure. But the terror underneath, the staystaystaypleasestay, that's not his, because he knows neither of them are going anywhere.]

. . . I don't know how to explain what just happened very well.

[Which is not to say that he won't try, of course. He clears his throat and resumes the third braid, his knuckles brushing deliberately against Star's cheek for a touchstone.]

Fear . . . not of him or you, but of . . . absence. If that makes any sense.