A Visitor

Sanzo stared at the sleeping girl in the other bed. He was amazed at her ability to distract him so that she could change clothes in the same room as him and he didn’t notice the change until several minutes later.

“Quit being amazed,” Max said suddenly, shocking Sanzo out of his reverie. “I feel more comfortable with you when you’re grouchy.”

“Tch,” he said. He reached for a smoke, but the carton wasn’t there. “What did you do with my cigarettes?” he demanded.

“They’re bad for you,” was all she said. Sanzo shot a glare at her, realizing as he did so that her back was to him and it was too dark to see anything more than shadows in the darkness. “Besides, weren’t you expecting something like this from me?”

Sanzo sighed silently. “I have no expectations.”

“That’s bull,” Max said. “I can hear it in your voice. I’ll bet you think I’m the biggest busybody in the world and you wonder why you’re putting up with me.”

“I didn’t think you were this self-conscious,” Sanzo muttered under his breath. He felt a small breeze at his mouth as he spoke and his words were suddenly very loud in his ears.

There was a long minute of silence as Sanzo pondered about the air before Max spoke. “I’ll bet that Gojyo is listening hard through the wall for sounds of sex.”

Sanzo tried to see Max in the dark, wondering what she was getting at. “That sounds like something he’d do.”

“Hakkai is probably watching him and laughing his ass off silently. He can see pretty well in the dark.”
That stopped Sanzo. “How do you know that?”

“He isn’t human any more,” Max said. “He is something… similar… to what Goku is. He was the same as you when he was born, but he isn’t anymore. It’s almost like he’s Gojyo.”

“Hakkai is nothing like Gojyo,” Sanzo said.

“Well, in a roundabout sort of way they’re both mixed-breeds. Well, Gojyo is half human and half demon, right? Hakkai was born human and turned into a demon. They both exist in both worlds and are truly part of neither.”

“How do you know all this?” Sanzo asked, reaching for his gun. It wasn’t where he had left it. “Where’s my gun?”

“I put it in the drawer of the nightstand,” she said. “I didn’t want to turn over in my sleep and wake up shot.”

Sanzo pulled open the drawer and reached in, feeling the familiar handle of his gun. “How the hell do you know so much about us?” he asked suspiciously.

Max was quiet for several moments before she didn’t answer his question. “What do you know about me?” she asked instead.

“What?” Sanzo asked, surprised. It wasn’t what he was expecting. He pulled his hand out of the drawer and closed it, his gun still inside.

“What do you know about me?” What information have you gathered about me that you know is true, but I never told you?”

“Why do you want to know that?” Sanzo asked.

He could hear Max shift around on her bed. “I’m curious. I always assume that people can read me the way I read them, but they usually can’t. I just want to know what you see when you look at me.”

Sanzo thought about it for a long time when he finally spoke – although he couldn’t figure out why he was indulging in this conversation. He hoped he wasn’t waking Max from sleep. “I know you are a young woman. You’re very idealistic, but you apply those ideals to real life, and it seems to work. You’re tough. I don’t think we could kill you if we tried.”

“You got all of that from the way I behave,” Max said with a mumble. “I always keep an eye on a person’s aura if I can’t read their body language. It tells me what a person is and not who they are, but it makes it easier for me to keep track of their emotions. It tells me that you are male, human, homosexual, and you aren’t a virgin. You aren’t in pain and emotionally you’re pretty neutral at the moment. You are also lying on your back.”

“You can tell from my aura that I’m lying on my back?” Sanzo asked, a little paranoid.

“Your aura is a glowing light around you. I can see your silhouette in the middle. I suppose that’s cheating, though. Anyway, I can also see your relationships with other people when you’re with them.”

A thrill of fear ran down Sanzo’s back. “What can you…” he started before he caught himself. He groaned, frustrated with his loss of self control for the first time in his life.

There was a distinct smile in Max’s voice as she spoke. “I can really only see compatibility. The more compatible you are with someone, plus your emotions when you are dealing with someone, plus the way you behave around that person, equals your relationship with that person. For example…”

“I don’t need an example,” Sanzo snapped. He was afraid of her – she saw way more than she needed to, and he was worried that she’d reveal everything, breaking through the walls he had built within himself and bearing his soul to the world.

“For example,” Max insisted, “My brother Dan was very compatible with this girl. When he was around her his emotional state was jumpy – he’d go from happy to frustrated to annoyed and back to happy constantly. For the longest time they only ever fought, bickered, and griped at each other. I told him one day to just ask her out already and give my headache a rest. They’ve been married now for four years, and Debbie is pregnant and ready to kill Dan for knocking her up… at least she was going to the last time I saw her. She’d just found out she was going to have twins, which is a genetic trait that runs in my mom’s side of the family.”

Sanzo couldn’t care less, except he found it interesting that Max had a brother. Why the hell was she telling him all this?

“So…” Max said loudly, and then her voice quieted down to just above a whisper. “You’re homosexual, not a virgin, compatible with Hakkai, attracted to Hakkai, and pretending to be indifferent to Hakkai. Why did you use me to kick Goku out of your room instead of the man you love?”

Sanzo’s heart nearly stopped and he had to struggle to breathe. “What the hell are you accusing me of?!” he demanded at a shout.

“Calm down! The others can hear you through the wall!”

“I don’t fucking care!” he shouted. He stopped abruptly when he heard Max laughing.

“I’m sorry I embarrassed you,” she apologized between giggles. “If you want Hakkai, why not just change rooms with Gojyo? He’ll complain, but he’ll understand if you say that Goku is bugging you.”
That wasn’t the problem. Hakkai – gentle, snarky, kind Hakkai – had never expressed interest in Sanzo. Hakkai was still in love with Kannan, his dead wife, even though three years had already passed.

“Get out,” Sanzo said to Max.

“No,” she said with a giggle.

“Get out,” he said again.

There was a brief hesitation before Max said, “No take-backs. You said you wanted me to sleep with you in your room. I realize you just didn’t want me in Hakkai’s room and were jealous, but you can’t take back what you said. Sorry, Hon, but you’re stuck with me.”

Sanzo debated reaching for his gun but realized that Max would have time to counter his attack before he could even threaten her. He’d had the gun in his hand before and she was able to rush up to him and pinch his gun barrel closed before he could fire. For he first time he realized what a dangerous position he was in.

“Of course, I can always go next door, tell them we got into a tiff and send Hakkai in here so you can finally do the bump and grind that you’ve been yearning for,” Max said musingly.

“DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE!” Sanzo roared.

“WILL YOU SHUT UP?” Max shouted back even louder than Sanzo. “The others are going to come here and ask why you’re shouting and you’ll have to explain this conversation… or you’ll sit there and pout while I do. I hate lying.”

“Tch.” Sanzo’s hand reached down between the bed and the wall and found his cigarettes. Apparently they had fallen there a while ago. He grabbed the lighter off the nightstand and lit up. He waited for a long time, but Max didn’t say anything. “Aren’t you going to take my smokes away?”

Max sighed. “I actually don’t care if you and Gojyo smoke except that you’re slowly killing yourselves. It’s none of my business, really, but I’m a busybody. Besides, playing with you is fun.”
“Playing?” She was playing with him?

When she responded she sounded contrite and a little embarrassed. “Yeah, I’m awful. To be honest, I hate it when people lie, but I lie a lot in order to keep myself and others safe. Because of this, when I detect someone else is lying I don’t say anything – unless the lie is a harmful one, of course.”

“Then why are you butting into my business?” Sanzo demanded.

Max responded immediately. “Not everything that is harmful will harm the body.”