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Julien never cared for big gatherings. It didn’t matter if it was only five people sat at a dinner table together, including himself. They never failed to give him a sense of impending doom as he sat at a long table, listening to everyone chat with eachother. He didn’t bother to speak up tonight anyways, he was sure that nobody had paid any mind to the empty chair at the table.
He fell asleep quicker than usual tonight. Usually he laid on the couch in the basement with his eyes open and locked on the stained ceiling until he eventually drifted to sleep. It wasn’t until he re-opened his eyes that he realized the pitch black nothingness he was in was, in fact, a dream. His beady eyes blinked hazily before he looked down at his hands.
His hands.
Not gloves, hands.
What?
He stared at the backs of them, then the palms. The fingers, the fingernails, the fingerprints. Everything. Everything was there. He gave himself a quick pat-down. He was wearing the same clothes he did before he woke up in that computer room. His ballcap, his jacket, his jeans—
Every. Little. Thing.
He had the urge to wipe his nose for a moment.
After processing what he was, he took the time to actually get a good look of where he was. It was complete nothingness, no matter where you turned. It was jarring to be able to see your own hands and feet clearly against the black, as if there was some strange light source shining on only yourself.
Well, aside from the eyes.
Julien’s heart practically shot out of his chest as he spotted them, two lopsided, almost cartoonish looking eyes with absolutely no color in them. Nothing but small, black, dotted pupils directly in the middle that stared like a predator. Of course, there was a smile to match, if you could count it as one. Equally as cartoony, comparable to the shape the moon takes when it looks like a fingernail in the sky.
God, just wake me up now. He thought.
“ Jules.” It spoke, unmoving from where Julien had spotted it. That voice. It sounded so.. familiar, so uncanny, like a strange memory he couldn’t quite remember right. “ It’s me.. it’s me.”
His mouth hung slightly ajar, only closing it to swallow back his fear dryly.
“ Wh- Who..” He stammered, “ Who are you?”
The smile slowly curled into a frown, moving forward slightly as a hand pressed itself against Julien’s forearm, making his skin buzz with a strange CRT-like static. He flinched on instinct.
“ Jules, you don’t remember me? At all?” It whimpered.
He studies it’s face for a moment, taking it the way it spoke, the way it reacted to him, the way it asked if he remembered. He wasn’t the best at remembering.. anyone, really. He never really remembered anyone but Auggie.
No.
No, no. No.
“ .. Auggie?”
Julien croaked. If he wasn’t already asleep, surely he would have passed out, or questioned if this was a dream, but it.. was. It was only a dream. But didn’t everything in this place seem like a dream? If you were to wake up in a flash cartoon you watched in your youth, surely it was a dream.
People always have dreams inside of dreams, anyways.
Another dark hand curled around him, wrapping around his waist in a slithering hug. His body buzzed with that same static-like feeling, making the hairs on his arms stand uncomfortably. Auggie’s head finally came into view, resting itself on Julien’s collarbone.
“ Julien, I missed you. I missed you so much.”
He wasn’t sure what to say. After all, he had attended Auggie’s supposed funeral because they were presumed dead. Nobody cared enough to look for a genderqueer, progressive young adult in the town they had grown up in together, after all. That didn’t mean he stopped believing they were out there, somewhere.
“ Auggie.. where did.. where..” He mumbled, his arms still hung awkwardly at his sides. He wasn’t able to muster up any more words to speak. If he did, he’d say something stupid. Unimportant.
“ Yes, Jules?” Auggie chimed, those large eyes staring up at him. Two sharp, bright, ovular spectacles that were impossible to look away from. He wanted to hurl. He wasn’t sure if he was too excited, or anxious, or too in shock. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to wake up.
His mouth opened and closed, only verbalizing short abrupt noises like a broken record.
“ Jules?” Auggie repeated in that same chirping tone. “ Jules.”
Their arms squeezed around him a bit tighter in an attempt to get him to speak. It didn’t work. Julien held his breath.
“ Jules.” They spoke again, their tone dropping.
He couldn’t look at them.
“ Jules.”
Why couldn’t he look at them?
“ Julien.”
After all these years, why can’t he look at them? Why can’t he stand to hear their voice again? He should be happy.
“ Julien.”
Why couldn’t he be happy?
“ Julien.”
You should be grateful, grateful you’re able to hear them again.
“ Julien.”
The air was leaving his lungs, their arms coiling tighter around him like a cobra suffocating their prey. The prey they had been watching, waiting to catch, waiting to hear finally give up. Finally give in
Their voice repeated, repeated, and repeated again. His name quickening in intonation each time. The air in his lungs escaped just as quickly. He felt his body shake under the pressure, his bones squeezing further against each other. He couldn’t cry out for help. His eyes clenched shut.
“ Julien.”
“ Julien.”
“ JULIEN.”
“ JULIEN! “
His eyes snapped open as he jolted up, his lungs taking in a sharp, startled breath. His gloved hand pressed against his chest, feeling the way his heart raced against his palm. He didn’t even take a moment to process that he wasn’t alone in the basement anymore.
That person that took the appearance of Homestar himself stood awkwardly beside the couch Julien had been sleeping on, shoving invisible hands into the pockets of the letterman jacket they wore. Once Julien came down from the panic of his assumed nightmare, the Homestar person spoke up.
“ Ian.. asked to check on you,” they finally stated bluntly. “ Guess he wanted me to make sure you weren’t, like, trying to kill yourself or something.”
Julien only stared for a moment, his head still hazy from the mix of residual panic and sleepiness. He simply nodded and rubbed his forehead, grumbling.
“ That uh, gem thing on your head was.. glowing, y’know. You probably wanna check that out, or get Ian to check it out for you.” They commented, staring at said gem before glancing at Julien’s face, then averting eye contact once his eyes shifted to look back at them.
The gem? Oh, right, the gem Strong Bad had. He never took much notice of that.
“ Uh, thanks.. Star.” He mumbled, wincing as the other shot a small glare at him for using that name.
“ I’d go back upstairs and reassure Ian if I were you, I don’t want him asking me to go down here again.”
The Homestar person made their way back up the basement stairs, not waiting for a response from Julien. Not like he was planning on giving one, anyways.
His eyes lingered up the stairs for a moment before drifting to the floor in front of him, then up at the blank screen of the TV in front of the couch. He could just barely make out his reflection against the dark screen, seeing the mask, the weird horns.. the gem. He couldn’t help but stare.
And, for just a moment, he reached out and grazed his glove against the screen for a moment, hoping to feel the static against him. One more time.