Esme kept her head down and closed her eyes as Duke began to talk, inwardly flinching as he corrected her, and reminded her she had blown on him before, and at least this time he was being dumb. A new smile almost came to her lips from him calling himself dumb. There were a few times she heard him call himself dumb before but she never thought she’d hear him say it again. It had always felt like some rare moment when he did. As soon as his fingers touched her chin, she opened her eyes and looked at him as he tilted her chin. The smile she saw spreading across his face was contagious. That particular smile always had been, it was one that could light up the darkest of rooms and lift anyone out of their foulest of moods. In her mind, she referred to it as one of his superpowers, because it always worked no matter how much she tried to fight against it.

She took in his next words, knowing full well how true they were but not benign around him for years, she hadn’t been sure if things had changed. Though what he said after that made her visibly wince. In the past, there had been many times she had hit him in one of her outbursts, a few of those resulting in stitches that Dean had to take care of. She could still remember each and every time she hit him which resulted in him needing stitches because of the ring she wore then and still did. Before her first kidnapping by demons, she could be downright fiery and hard to reason with when someone or something pissed her off. Both Dean and Duke had known to keep their distance from her during those times, but a few times they couldn’t help themselves and would team up to pull her out of her mood by doing sweet or stupid things. 

The pinching of her chin and his thumb brushing over her bottom lip brought her back from dwelling on the past and made her heart flutter. A soft smile came to her lips as she watched him watch the contact intently, and seeing his nervousness had seemed to fade. Duke’s next words caused Esme to laugh because she knew just how true they were. She did in fact suffer from bouts of being hangry. “Hangry, huh?” she laughed, seeing his smile. She then acted as if she was going into thought, averting her eyes from his for a moment. “I guess you’re right, I was hangry…. Now I’m just hungry.” She laughed again as she looked into his eyes. He had worked his magic on her again. How was he so good at bringing her out of her funk? Also, how did he get her to fall for him despite all the walls she had put up after her trauma? Lifting her free hand, she brought it up, and gently brushed some of his hair from his face with a warm smile. 

She then rested her hand on his cheek. “You still know how to work your magic on my mood.” she said softly with a smile. Esme then pulled his face closer to hers and softly nuzzled his nose with hers. “I guess that makes you my chill pill.” she whispered against his lips. She was moments from kissing him when the yelling from outside reached her ears. She sighed through her nose and then looked over at the drawn curtains. “Should we go check on that or let them work it out themselves.” she asked him.