There was no official plan, but Parker, Hardison, and Sophie all found themselves at Nate's for breakfast the next day. They waited for Eliot for nearly an hour before Hardison finally gave up and went down the street for bagels and coffee. As the morning stretched into afternoon, they continued to hang around at Nate's. Occasionally, someone would mention going up to Eliot's to see if he was coming down, but no one ever made it as far as Nate's front door. The known threat of what Eliot would do to an unexpected visitor, mixed with the unknown but probably deadlier threat of what Tessa would do, kept all of them in Nate's living room, hanging around and waiting for Eliot and Tessa to show up on their own.

It was nearly two o'clock when the prodigal couple finally arrived. Nate and Hardison were playing cards, a large pile of poker chips in front of Nate and a significantly smaller pile in front of an irritated Hardison. Sophie was watching a fashion show on Nate's TV and trying fruitlessly to explain to Parker why the designers were making outfits out of stuff they'd found on a construction site.

"It's entertainment, Parker! No one's actually going to wear something like that out on the street."

Parker was staring contemplatively at the bright orange traffic-cone bra one of the models was wearing.

"On the street, it might screw up traffic patterns," Parker agreed, sounding thoughtful. "I wonder if we could use that somehow."

"No one on this team is going out in public wearing traffic cones as an undergarment," Nate put in from across the room, and Hardison swore as Nate showed that he was holding another royal flush.

"In order to be an undergarment, wouldn't it have to be under something?" Parker countered, still intent on the TV screen. "And it does make her boobs look really big. Maybe if Sophie -"

"Oh, you can't pin that on me! I wasn't even in Serbia when the Coalition killed Radan!"

Parker finally looked away from the TV as Tessa entered the room, her voice sharp as she argued with Eliot.

"Since when do you have to be in the country to carry out a hit?" Eliot stormed into Nate's apartment on Tessa's heels, the rest of the team coming to a standstill to watch the erupting battle. "He was a genocidal maniac who poisoned the water supply of a whole town. He killed fifteen hundred people, and three weeks later he was dead of that same poison, which a certain someone planted in his prized bottle of 1945 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild Jeroboam. You might as well have signed your name on his death certificate!"

Tessa put her hands on her hips, meeting his gaze evenly.

"Eliot. Would I do something like that to a hundred thousand dollar bottle of wine?"

"Not if you thought there was any chance he was going to offer you a glass."

She raised her eyebrows at him, but the smile tugging at the corner of her mouth gave her away. Eliot pointed wordlessly at her, waggling his finger, and there was a moment of tense silence before Tessa laughed.

"All right, all right. I'll claim Radan." She slid onto one of the barstools at Nate's kitchen counter, then added thoughtfully, "Of course, if he hadn't been such a selfish bastard, I would've at least let him enjoy the wine before I killed him."

"Excuse me," Nate said finally, seeing the opening and taking it. "I don't mean to interrupt, but what are you doing, exactly?"

"Tallying."

Parker looked at Hardison, who looked at Sophie, who looked at Nate, who shrugged. Eliot watched the silent exchange and shook his head.

"All assassins -"

"Hunters," Tessa interrupted dryly, and Eliot rolled his eyes.

"All hunters keep a kill count, a record of all the jobs they've done. Works like a résumé."

"It's also fun at black ops parties," Tessa added. "Have a few drinks at the bar, compare your list to the list of the guy next to you. You just hope you're not recounting the story of killing someone he worked with…" She frowned, glancing over at Eliot. "That seems to happen a lot, actually."

"It's a small world," Eliot replied with a shrug as he slid a bottle of water across the bar to Tessa and opened a beer for himself. "That's why I don't go to the parties."

"You don't go to the parties because you're an antisocial killjoy who was so desperate to get out of Jinx's Christmas party -"

"Oh, you're going to start in on that again, huh? Like you didn't bitch at me for six months after I missed that -"

"- so desperate that you signed on for a gunrunning job in Sierra Leone for a third of your usual price just to have an excuse not to come, and then your operation got busted and I had to go all the way -"

"Here we go," Eliot muttered, taking a long swig of his beer.

" - to the ass-end of West Africa to excavate you out of a collapsed mine shaft!"

"You want to talk about crappy rescues? How about that time in Croatia when your target caught you in his attic? Do you know how long it took me to talk my client out of having me killed because I missed his deadline saving your ass? You don't have -"

"This is sweet," Sophie declared, interrupting their heated argument as she walked over to the bar. She settled on the barstool next to Tessa's, propping her chin on her hand. "Really, it is. It's like the mating dance of some loud, violent species of bird."

"Not enough feathers," Parker opined, wrinkling her nose. "Are you going to make lunch, Eliot? I'm hungry."

"Me too," Tessa agreed solemnly. "And I seem to recall someone promising me one of his world-famous four-cheese omelets in exchange for me getting out of bed."

Hardison chuckled. "Man, aren't you supposed to be bribing women into bed, not out of it?"

Tessa held up the water bottle Eliot had handed her, giving Hardison a slow smile.

"Just taking a little break. Have to stay hydrated when you're exercising, you know; eat some protein to keep up your strength." She paused at his expression. "Are you actually blushing?"

Sophie glanced at Eliot, expecting some sort of irritated response from the hitter, and was surprised to see a smile on his face as he cracked an egg into the frying pan.

"Tessa Quinn," Nate said, changing the subject as he came to stand next to Sophie at the counter. "Any relation to a hitter named Quinn? Eliot had a little run-in with him in LA a while back."

"Mmm, no," Tessa replied, swallowing a mouthful of water before replying. "No relation. But I did send a very nice wreath to his funeral."

"Quinn's dead." Nate gave Tessa a penetrating look. On the other side of the counter, Eliot had gone still and was staring at Tessa. "How did he die?"

Tessa raised her eyebrows at him. "Why ask me? You already answered your own question."

"What, because he fought me?" Eliot demanded. "I gave him a beating, Tess, but I didn't kill him."

She turned to look at him, giving him the kind of patient smile a teacher might give to a particularly slow student.

"Every hitter in the business knows better than to take a job against Eliot Spencer. Quinn seemed to have missed the memo, so I made sure someone sent him a copy."

Eliot set down the whisk he was holding, leaning deliberately across the counter to put his face directly in front of Tessa's. "You had Quinn killed because he took a job against me?"

Tessa reached out, tapping her index finger lightly against the tip of Eliot's nose.

"Just because I wasn't around doesn't mean I wasn't keeping an eye on you."

Eliot caught her hand before she could pull away, and in a move that surprised everyone but Tessa, pulled it to his lips and kissed it tenderly.

"I missed you, darlin'."

Tessa smiled, serene. Sophie looked over at Nate and, seeing the calculating look on his face, decided that the two of them needed to talk about this later. Eliot's attitude was so different when Tessa was around; she wasn't sure what sort of effect that was going to have on the team. Certainly Parker and Hardison were both staring at the hitter like he'd just announced he was quitting the team to join a touring ballet performance of The Nutcracker.

Eliot swore suddenly, and Sophie snapped back to reality just in time to realize the omelets were burning. Tessa chuckled as Eliot grabbed for the spatula, rescuing the eggs from an ignoble death.

Without having to ask, Eliot had remembered everyone's favorite egg dishes - plain scrambled eggs for Nate, a vegetable omelet for Sophie, sunny-side up for Parker, scrambled with cheese for Hardison, the aforementioned four-cheese omelet for Tessa, and poached for himself. Once everyone had their belated lunch in front of them, Sophie raised her glass of orange juice in one hand.

"To old friends," she proposed, glancing sidelong at Nate. He gave her a dry smile but copied her movement, raising his own glass.

"Hear, hear."

One by one, the others clinked their glasses together, then dug in.