[h2]Esme[/h2]
Esme watched Duke grappling with what she had told him, like always. No matter how many times she pleaded with him to let her in and share his feelings and thoughts with her, he wouldn’t or couldn’t. It was one of the main reasons she worried about him so much, even back in the day, and was even the cause of most of their arguments. But she was determined to get her words through that thick skull of his and to make him see she was there for him through everything. She was there for the good and the bad and wasn’t leaving him because he lost himself to grief. However, if she were honest with herself, she should be listening to her own words. She wasn’t the greatest at sharing or expressing her own emotions or troubles with anyone, either. Esme often kept them bottled up inside until they finally exploded from her, and that had recently become quite dangerous with her new powers presenting themselves. Like Duke, Esme had only let out a small portion of her emotions to others and bottled and suppressed the majority of them, either out of fear or not wanting to burden others with them.

The only person she had truly been open with was her mother, but after she lost her mother, she never truly opened up to anyone, not even her godmother, to whom she felt she could tell anything. There were a couple she would open up to, but they had fur and four legs. So did they really count? Maybe and maybe not, but that didn’t matter to her; she hadn’t seen them in quite a while, since it had been some time since she had been home with her godmother. She would have to find time to go and visit. She had been away for far too long as it was. Esme also needed to call her godmother and update her on everything that had happened recently. Which she knew would worry her, but also knew she would possibly be able to find some answers to the many questions rolling around in her mind. Some of those answers she was still waiting to hear from Cason, hoping he had found out a few things. Esme was desperate to know if he’d had a chance to find out anything or heard anything from other demons. However, there was a part of her that wondered if she wanted to know the answers. Could she mentally handle the answers with no way to talk to her parents? 

When Duke responded to her pleas, Esme sighed inwardly and nearly closed her eyes before he looked into her eyes. “I know.” she said before he continued. She wasn’t expecting him to be good at it, especially with it being new to him. She just wanted him to talk to her and not run off when things got to be too much to handle. A slight smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as he spoke, and she nodded. “You’re welcome, but I couldn’t leave you even if everything inside me was telling me to.” she told him honestly with a small sniffle. “And halfway sounds good. Knowing that much will help my sanity a bit.” She wanted to say more, but Cason suddenly clearing his throat caused her to flinch; she had momentarily forgotten he was there while trying to get through to Duke. Esme sighed heavily at Cason’s words, but also nodded in agreement. Her eyes briefly closed as Duke pulled his hand from hers and wiped away her tears as he replied to Cason. “Yeah, that might be for the best.” she replied to Cason with a sniffle. 

[h3]About An Hour Later[/h3]
Esme had stayed quiet the entire ride back to Bobby’s, secretly watching Duke and staying in tune with what emotions she could feel coming from him. Halfway through the ride, she had reached over and taken his hand in hers, just waiting to have something to hold onto and feel that he was there. These close calls of losing him were weighing heavily on her mind, as well as the loss of Mika. As soon as they passed under the sign for the junkyard, Esme’s chest grew tight and achy, making it a bit difficult to breathe. When Cason parked Duke’s truck, she didn’t move; she continued to stare out the window and didn’t attempt to get out. The closing of the door somewhat snapped her back to reality, and she only nodded to Cason’s words, then looked at her and Duke’s hands and intertwined fingers. After a moment of silence, Esme shifted to look at Duke, then carefully pulled herself into his lap, bringing his good arm around her and resting his casted arm in her lap. She then leaned into him, resting her head softly on his shoulder and her forehead resting against his neck without saying a word, just like she did back in the day when either of them needed to be quietly comforted. 

She could still remember the times he would pull her into his lap and hug her tightly to his chest whenever she and Dean would disagree about something, and she’d storm off and sit somewhere. In this case, she wanted to feel his arms around her, hear his breathing and heartbeat in her ears, as well as be a comfort for him. As she sat in his lap, she could also remember the times she had pulled him aside and pulled him in close to keep him from bolting, which sometimes worked but not every time. Esme took a breath and slowly let it out as she nuzzled her forehead against Duke’s neck and held his good arm around her. It felt like hardly any time had passed when she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. Without moving too much, she pulled her phone from her pocket and opened the text that was from Cason. She typed a quick one-handed response and hit send. [i]“Alright, thanks.”[/i] She then tucked her phone back into her pocket. “ Cason said Dean is out cold if we want to go inside…. If anything, we can just go in to get cleaned up.” she told him, in a voice just above a whisper. “Unless you just want to use the bucket tonight.”

Even if Dean was out cold, she wasn’t entirely sure he would want to go into the house or not after everything that had happened that night, which she couldn’t blame him. She, on the other hand, preferred the shower over the bucket. There was only so much you could do with a towel and a bucket of water, and there was no way she would feel clean enough to sleep only using them tonight. Whatever he chose, her mind was set firmly on the shower, even though she didn’t want to leave him alone for any length of time.