“The heck did he mean by ‘nothing tea won’t fix’?” Your glare could curdle milk. He watched you sharpen it like a blade and, somehow, smiled as if that were the point.

He’d come back from whatever errand had left him in tatters—an expression too calm for someone with a bandage on his jaw and a sleeve darker with blood than it should be. You had half a mind to throttle him. The Duke, notorious for measured words and clipped courtesy, now offering a tea cure for cuts and temper alike? Ridiculous. Infuriating. And entirely Wriothesley.

He propped himself on the edge of the sofa, posture impeccable despite the limp in his step. One gloved hand rested near the damage on his coat, the other folded over his knee, chin tilted like a man who’d just made an excellent joke and expected applause. “Tea,” he repeated with that maddeningly amused tilt to his voice, as though the world’s problems were mere spills best blotted.

You advanced. Not to take tea, but to take him down a peg. Your heels clicked on the floor; your stare burned hotter with each step. He didn’t flinch—how could he? He’d seen worse than your fury and still managed to be perfectly composed. Of course he would.

When you reached him, you didn’t bother with words. Instead you leaned in close, close enough to count the fine lines at the corner of his eye and to smell the faint copper under his clean scent. Your hand found the bandage with unreasonable speed, fingers brushing the fabric in a way that left no doubt: you were furious, but you were also here, and you would not leave him lying broken on your watch.

His smirk faltered for the briefest beat. The armor of sarcasm slipped, and—only when the glint in your eyes softened—did the corner of his mouth genuinely relax. He allowed you to fuss, to tug the coat aside and dab at his wounds with the exact small ministrations he’d never had the patience to administer to himself.

Tea arrived in the form of a steaming pot you’d never asked for and a mug he let you place in his hands. He sipped too quickly, cough-choked, and laughed—low and slightly stunned—when warmth and the ridiculousness of it all finally seemed to reach him. Your death glare? It diffused into something like a reprimand that smelled faintly of relief.

He was still sarcastic, still infuriating, and absolutely still injured. But you’d shown up—sharp jaw, sterner eyes, hands that refused to be idle—and that, more than any bitter tea, fixed something in him that his pride would never admit needed mending. He let you fuss, let you scold, let you cradle him like he was exactly what he was: the man who’d go too far and the man who’d trust you to bring him back.

And when, finally, he reached out and tucked your fingers into his palm, the Duke’s amusement returned—but quieter, softer. Behind the sarcasm, he’d always known this was how he liked being fixed: begrudgingly, intimately, and entirely by you.