Harmless Things (Jean Hobbs AU)

Part thirty-eight

Dean P.O.V.

I wasn't getting enough sleep. 

In some cases, that wasn't necessarily true. It had been a week since Scarlett died, and in that time I had three nights without sleep then slept an entire day, went another two nights without sleep but crashed out for a couple of hours this morning. 

Grieving was exhausting but my body wouldn't let me rest. I knew there wasn't a right way to do it but I didn't know how to mourn. I did know that a lot of time I felt empty. Numb. But then there were other times where I had never experienced pain like this, and my heart felt like it had been ripped out of my chest and everything ached and I felt as though I could be sick. 

When I wasn't sleeping, I was either fidgeting, crying, talking to Jack or Daniel or just staring into space. On the nights where I didn't sleep, I spent the hours in the early sunrise planning the funeral. At first when it came to arranging it, Daniel, our mother and I with Jack sitting next to me sat around the table to discuss it, but sooner or later their responsibility diminished and now it was just me doing it all with Jack putting in a contribution every now and then. 

I sighed, sticking my foot out of the duvet and regretting it immediately when it was met with the cold air. Jack, who was sleeping, stayed oblivious to my conscious self. He was lying flat on his back and my head was on his chest, my arm bent at the elbow so the tips of my fingers were just below his shoulder. I listened to his breaths for a while, hoping it would make me tired enough to sleep, but when our part of the world started brightening and a soft light began to illuminate the room, I gave up and climbed over Jack and got out of bed (we were sleeping in my bed because being on the sofa felt too weird), pulling my dressing gown on before heading downstairs.

The kitchen wasn’t bright enough because of the closed blinds at the window, so I shut the door and turned on the harsh stare of the main light and sat at the table which was full of scattered sheets of paper with notes on them. I grabbed one at random and stared down at it.

‘Flowers’ it said at the top of the page with the rest of it blank. Flowers. Where you have flowers at a funeral?

It felt like such an obvious question but I couldn’t work out the answer. I had only been to one funeral in my life, but that was a couple of years ago and I didn’t remember it well. I thought maybe that should’ve been the opposite and I should be able to recall every little detail, but I couldn’t.

"Dean? What're you doing?" Jack mumbled, his eyes squinting. I didn’t even hear him come down the stairs because I was too focused on thinking about flowers and where they should be.

"Planning. I can't sleep." 

Jack pulled a chair up next to mine as close as he could get it and sat down on it, putting an arm around my waist and resting his head on my shoulder. 

"Come back to bed, Dean. You don't have to do this now." 

"I'm not tired. What colours should the flowers be?" 

"Lots of different colours, she liked colourful things. I think you should ban the black theme too, or at least everyone should wear something pink." 

“Good idea,” I wrote down what he said and put the pen back down, feeling restless. “I don’t want it to be a huge funeral, just a small one. She didn’t like being around a lot of people,” Jack let out a noise as a reply and I took it as an excuse to carry on. “I wish it was me that got the cancer instead of her. She didn’t deserve to die.”

“Neither do you,” Jack said, sitting up. “Look at me, Dean,” I turned my head and I didn’t even realise I was crying until he placed his hand on the side of my face and his thumb wiped away a tear. “I know it hurts so much right now and I’m not going to say it’s ever going to stop hurting, but we’ll do amazing things one day. Who knows, we might even be flown to America,” he paused to chuckle. “But we’ve got so much to look forward to, you’ll see.”