Over the (Star)

By: OkageHime

Disclaimer: If I owned JTHM, I WOULD HAVE FULL ACCESS TO THE WIRED! I mean…no, I don’t own it. Not meh!

Summary: Devi, through the power of Tenna, obtains a roommate by the name of Edgar Vargas. Revelations are made, centering around a certain unhealthy man, including the discovery that Edgar shouldn’t even be alive…Slash. Edgar/Johnny

Devi stared at the man. “What?”

“I-I…I said…” He sighed and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. The pigtailed lady standing in the doorway watched him closely, like a hawk; a purple haired hawk with crosses dangling from her ears.

The black woman besides him smacked him on the back. “The man says he wants to be a roomy with you! So, let’s get him settled in and-“

Devi released the heavy sigh she had been holding in from the beginning of the conversation. “Why doesn’t he just get a separate room, Tenna?” she groaned.

Tenna stuck out her tongue. “Noooo,” she whined, “Mister…uh…what did you say your name was?”

The man pulled his jacket closer around his body. “Ah…Vargas.”

“Right. Mr. Vargas here desperately needs a room, but he doesn’t have enough money for a nice spacious one. So I told him about you and your spacious art room and he agreed to go half and half with you on the rent. Sound like a deal?”

Devi shot her friend an incensed glare. “Why don’t you just room with him?”

Tenna grinned. “Oh, I would Devi. I definitely would. I would so much do that thing that we are talking about now in this point in space and time except for that trivial matter of space. My apartment room happens to have none.”

Devi felt like jabbing the two paintbrushes she currently held in her paint splattered hands into her eye sockets. Instead, she tiredly stared at the pair. “Oh, how convenient.”

“Come on, Devi,” Tenna pleaded, “He won’t attack you or get all horny on yah! Honest! (I think he’s gay!)”

The man blushed but didn’t say anything.

Devi held her face in her hands. “Why, Tenna? Why did you have to bring this guy over? WHY did you have to invite him into my home?”

Tenna shrugged. “He had neat glasses.”

Disregarding her friend’s simpleminded answer, Devi cast a fleeting look at the unfinished work in her studio. She had just started doing her own paintings again, too. This guy…this Mr. Vargas… would only get in the way. But the fact still stood that Devi hopelessly needed money for rent. Her resources were dwindling, slowly but surely. Devi looked the guy up and down again, taking in his timid appearance and glasses and striped shirt and brown, messy hair.

“Can you make yourself scarce, Mr. Vargas?” she asked, rubbing her dirty hands on her smeared clothes.

He nodded his head and gave her a small smile. “Yes. I’m pretty good at going unnoticed.”

The woman exhaled noisily. “Right, then. You can stay.” Devi stepped away into her kitchen. “You can have my bedroom. I’ll take the couch, I guess.”

Tenna gave a whoop of joy and pushed the hesitant man into the studio. “Woo! Now I have two friends to visit! Not one, but two, two, two-“

“Tenna…”

“Two, two, two, two, two-“

“Tenna, please stop. My head is about to explode.”

“-two, two friends in one room!”

Devi slammed the door in her face. She stood there, staring at it as if it would grow tentacle and strangle her.

Edgar Vargas did not think she would mind if that happened.

“Ah…I can…take the couch, if you want…Miss Devi.”

Devi, not taking her eyes off of the entryway, nodded. “Would you?”

Edgar traipsed towards the couch and set his suitcase down. The man’s jaw went slack as he gazed at the paintings hanging on the walls.

“Miss Devi…did you make these?”

“…Yes.”

Each stroke of paint, Edgar could see, was filled with passion. The pallet itself expressed anger, rage and fear; depicted in swirls of reds and blacks. One canvas, the one over there that hung over the mantelpiece, especially caught his eye.

“Who is that?” Vargas wondered aloud, pointing to the oil painting.

A man in the background of the picture glared furiously, his face obscured from having been painted over numerous times with grey. Edgar Vargas felt his heart shake. He had seen that man before; an enigma clothed in flesh.

Devi said nothing, only waltzed away from him into her own bedroom. “Goodnight, Mr. Vargas,” she called.

There was a quick, insistent click of the door being locked; as if bolting the conversation itself closed.

Edgar squinted, but he still could not make out the face. Still, the man peered heatedly at him from the oils and watercolors. He shook his head and collapsed on the couch, the fluorescent light bulbs on the ceiling humming like maddening angels.

Out of nowhere, a name rose from his lips.

“John…ny…”

Buuuuzzzzzz

Buuuuzzzzzz

Buuuuzzzzzz

Vargas rubbed his forehead. Yeah. He definitely needed sleep.