Eliot had blood on his hands, and the fact that it surprised him... surprised him. The sight of it hit him like a punch to the face, the kind he hadn't been expecting—the kind that made him stumble when he needed to keep his feet. He sucked in a breath, feeling his muscles bunch in preparation, tucking his elbows against his body. Parker called it his Danger Mode, and he—

Parker.

Eliot took another breath, staring down at his hands. It wasn't blood, it was cherry juice. He was standing in his kitchen, making cherry chutney for a pork loin he was going to grill later. Parker sat across from him, perched on a stool with her elbows on his island, watching him like a cat studying a bird.

She was saying his name, her eyes all bright and curious. He gave her a wordless grunt and turned away, all but running to the sink, pushing up on the faucet handle with his wrist and scrubbing the red off his skin. It stained the creases where his fingers bent, running down underneath the nails and making his knuckles look bruised.

"Eliot?" Parker was next to him now, peering over his arms as if he was doing something interesting instead of trying to scour the skin off his hands.

He cleared his throat. "It's—the—the juice was sticking to the knife."

Parker's eyes followed the flow of pink draining from his hands. "It looks a little bit like..." Her eyes snapped up to his, and he looked away before he could tell himself not to. I hadn't noticed, he wanted to say, all gruff and confident and sure. It was just sticky. You don't want to use a sticky knife.

But he couldn't force the words out. He continued to wash until his skin burned under the steaming water, feeling the heat of Parker's gaze like a he was an ant under her magnifying glass. When his flesh was pink and raw and as clean as he could possibly get it, he turned off the water and reached for the towel hanging from the oven handle.

Parker beat him to it. "Is that what bothered you?" she asked, holding it out to him.

He took it roughly, ready to tell her to mind her own business, but he couldn't make himself say that when he couldn't even meet her eyes. So he nodded, and she nodded in response.

"It wasn't. It was just cherry juice."

"I know that, Parker."

"You wanted to fight something though."

He wanted to argue that too, but his still-tense muscles told him that denial was pointless. "It's a reflex," he murmured instead.

"Would you have fought the cherries?"

The question made him blink at her, and her face looked so sincere, like she'd just asked an actual question and was waiting for an actual reply. "No, Parker," he said, managing a little of his usual gruffness.

"Good. Then I'd have to tell Nate, and he'd have to tell Sophie, and you'd have to take a wellness quiz and—"

"A wellness quiz?"

"Yeah." She leaned away from him, plucking a pitted cherry from the bowl on the counter and popping it into her mouth. "You know, like How are you feeling today? and Why do you think there are monsters in your closet? and How did you find out the monsters had the key to the ice cream freezer?"

Eliot stared at her, trying to make sense of her words. "Did someone ask you those questions?"

She nodded. "You know, the questions they ask you when you're a kid. Wellness quizzes." Eliot shook his head, and Parker seemed to deflate a little. "Oh. Was that just me?"

"No one ever asked me anything like that," Eliot said. His hands were dry now, but he didn't want to put down the towel. "Did you get asked those questions a lot?"

"A few times," Parker said, and he got the impression that she was hedging.

Eliot sighed. The Question flashed through his mind again: How did he end up with these people, these damaged children with damaged pasts that wouldn't let them go? He used to be someone who wouldn't care about this kind of thing—about her wellness questions, about her childhood, about her. He used to be the kind of monster that would have hidden in her closet.

But he'd just tried to scrub the skin off his hands because of some cherry juice.

"Go ahead," he grunted, replacing the towel on the rack and picking up his knife again.

"What?"

"Go ahead and give me the quiz." He forced his fingers around a pitted cherry, focusing on relaxing his grip on the knife so it would glide through the fruit instead of chopping.

Parker tilted her head. "How are you feeling?"

"Hungry."

"And how did you sleep last night?"

"Fine."

"No nightmares?"

"No."

"No getting up in the middle of the night to check for monsters under your bed?"

Eliot looked up from the cherries. "Do you do that?"

"Not anymore. Hardison said you chased all the monsters away for me."

A mix of emotions drove his eyes down again—he was irritated that Hardison was making promises for him, and touched at the thought that his name was enough to banish Parker's fear. "Next question."

"Have you been spending more time alone lately than is normal for you?"

"Parker, you're in my kitchen right now. I told you I was busy and you came over anyway."

"I thought it was code."

"It was code for I'm busy, don't come over."

"Okay. Are you having problems with your teachers or parents?"

He expected the mention of his parents to bring the usual spike of guilt, but instead he only quirked up his eyebrows and scraped the halved cherries into their waiting bowl. "Teachers?"

She nodded seriously. "Or parents. Any arguments with Nate lately?"

"Nate's not my dad."

She rolled her eyes. "Obviously. You don't look anything alike."

"No, Parker, I haven't had any arguments with Nate or Sophie, and I got Hardison to write my term paper for me."

Though he said it as sarcastically as possible, Parker nodded in approval. "Are you taking unnecessary risks or getting hurt frequently?"

"All of my risks are calculated and necessary."

"You did get shot during our last job."

"It was a graze," Eliot argued, rolling his shoulder to prove that it had healed. "Next question."

He waited, but she was quiet for so long that he was able to cut three cherries in peace before looking up. When he did, her eyes were focused on the counter between his cutting board and the bowl. "Will you tell me the next time you go into Danger Mode when there's no danger?"

Eliot frowned, setting down his knife and wiping his fingers on the towel. He wanted to say no, because admitting something like tensing for a fight while he was cooking at home felt like an admission of weakness, but her face was closing off in anticipation of his denial and he hated being responsible for that reaction. So he picked up a cherry half and held it out to her, waiting to speak until her eyes crept up to his. "I will," he said slowly. "If you promise to never tell Hardison."

In a heartbeat, her expression lit up and she plucked the cherry out of his palm. "Deal."

"You shouldn't be this excited about keeping secrets from your boyfriend."

"I don't want to get out of practice," she said, shrugging. "Besides, I keep tons of secrets from you."

"Like what?"

"Like that time Hardison put a clip in your hair while you were sleeping and you didn't notice it and then he got scared that you'd find it so he made me sneak behind you and take it out."

"Parker!"

She winced. "Which he told me not to tell you. So now you have to keep my secret too."

Eliot threw another handful of cherries onto his cutting board, scowling, and his gaze caught on his stained fingers. His body didn't react to the sight this time—his heartbeat stayed even, his shoulders relaxed. He glanced up at Parker, busy stealing another piece of fruit from the bowl, and failed to contain the burst of warmth that spread through him. Maybe she'd been right after all. Maybe "don't come over" was a code, one he hadn't even realized he'd been giving her. One she'd read as effortlessly as she'd read his reaction to the cherry juice on his skin. Had she always been that good at reading him? Were Sophie's lessons finally starting to take hold, or was Parker just getting better at recognizing emotion in others now that she had accepted it in herself?

Or did it have more to do with him than her? Was he starting to let down his guard more than he'd realized?

"Ask me another question," Eliot said quietly.

Parker beamed at him. "Another wellness question?"

"No. Anything."

"What else goes into the chutney?"

Eliot smiled, thinking back to the dish he'd tasted on his last trip to India. "I don't have a recipe, but I think I tasted onion, curry, lemon juice..."

"You always taste lemon juice."

"Yeah, well," he shrugged. "It's a very distinctive taste."