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The drive back to Jody’s place is a long one. And Dean means long. He’s been back and forth across this country, diced it apart by interstates, so many times that at this point he could probably host his own Travel Channel show. Of course, all of his recommendations for restaurants and accommodations would be skewed specifically towards diners and motels, but the point is, he’s driven on just about every asscrack road America has to offer. Hell, he’s driven from Maine to Georgia straight through at one point. Somehow, this five hour drive feels like molasses, with its identical trees and identical signs that make Dean think he’s actually just circling through a time loop that keeps popping him twenty miles back.
Maybe if Sam were here to bitch at things would be going a little bit faster. Or at least they’d be more entertaining. Instead, Claire is on the passenger side of the bench, texting at an almost worrying pace, just tap, tap, tapping on her phone. She hasn’t said much of anything to Dean in the last hour, since they got back into the car after a bathroom break. Not even in an angry way, just more like she doesn’t really feel like talking to him, so she doesn’t. Teenagers are so goddamn weird.
He gives her her space either way, and doesn’t try to start up a conversation. Just feels a little bit like a soccer mom taking their kid home from a game after a rough loss as he drums his fingertips on the steering wheel in time to Back in Black.
That is, until Claire starts shifting around on the bench. Dean throws a glance her way before putting his eyes back on the road. A second later, Claire sits up a little taller, lowering her phone for the first time in almost the entire ride. He shoots her another look, the first tinges of worry sparking at the base of his neck.
“What’s up?”
She turns to him in surprise, like she didn’t think he’d notice her change in behavior. As if. Dean’s a paranoid bastard, not to mention he pretty much raised Sam. He knows about teenagers, okay? He’s not stupid.
“It’s nothing. We just need to make a pitstop soon.”
“We?”
“Well, you’re the one driving, aren’t you? I can’t exactly stop if you don’t stop.”
“What do you need to stop for? We peed fifty miles back.”
“Well, I need to go again.”
He can tell that she’s lying. She’s good enough at it to fool someone who doesn’t know her, but she’s not great, and she’s certainly not good enough to sneak under Dean’s radar. Why is she lying to him? What has she been on her phone about this whole time? That spark of worry at his neck starts to burn a little brighter.
“Yeah, right,” he says, “you expect me to believe that?”
She scowls at him. “Believe what? That I need to take a piss?”
“Yes, actually. ‘Cause I know you’re not tellin’ me the truth.”
The words make Claire scoff and roll her eyes, but he can tell from her pinched and frazzled expression that he nailed the bullseye with that one. “You don’t know shit, Hasselhoff.”
Dean’s fingers tighten around the steering wheel in irritation, the muscle in his jaw ticking. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing!” Claire exclaims as she throws her hands up. “There’s nothing to tell you! I have to piss, pull over, end of story!”
Oh, that is so not gonna fly. Not when Dean’s mom-senses are tingly like crazy, ‘cause, yeah, he has mom-senses. He has mom-senses and dad-senses and brother-senses and also cheap-beer-senses. He’s a man of many talents. Right now, his many talents are about to send him into a panic because Jimmy’s daughter who is practically Cas’s daughter who is practically Dean’s daughter is acting suspicious as all hell, which, in this line of business usually means something really bad is about to happen.
“Claire,” he growls, “so help me God, tell me what the hell is going on. And I mean, right now.”
There’s a ringing note of fear in his voice under the gruffness that seems to cut through her in some capacity. She makes a frustrated noise in her throat that spills through clenched teeth and, to Dean’s surprise, smacks herself in the forehead.
“I started my period, okay?!”
The silence, some may say, is deafening.
“Come again?” Dean squeaks.
“Oh, you heard me, Winchester. Now, pull off to a gas station so I can go about my business, and then both of us can pretend this conversation never happened. I’m gonna have to bleach my brain when I get home.”
You’re telling me, sister is what Dean really wants to say. But he’s the adult in this situation, and Claire is in a vulnerable position whether she’ll admit it to him or not, so maybe he should have a little bit of maturity in this case. It’s not like he doesn’t know what a goddamn period is. He has met a woman, like, more than once.
So, as casually as he can possibly manage, he says, “I got tampons in the trunk if you need them.”
“I’m sorry,” Claire says incredulously, and when Dean throws another glance her way, her mouth is hanging open and she’s staring at him. “Did you just say you have tampons in your trunk?”
“Yes. Because I have tampons in the trunk.”
“Yeah- okay- why?”
Now it’s his turn to look at her incredulously. “Uh- because shit like this happens?”
“So, what? You just offer tampons out to people like ice cream cones?”
“Listen, smartass. Back before-” Oh no, he can feel his throat stick just a little at the thought of even getting the words out, so he changes the sentence altogether. “Last time Charlie was here, she got her period. She proceeded to yell at me for, Jesus, five minutes? Talking about how fifty percent of the world’s population has periods and I’m acting like it’s some niche underground culture because Sam and I are walking testosterone bags. So I got tampons for the car. I have tampons now. I’m not a caveman.”
From the corner of his eye, he sees Claire slump back onto the bench. Her mouth opens just to shut again, and she shakes her head before putting a hand over her eyes. “Jesus Christ, how is this my life?” but there’s a laugh on it now like she might actually think this is the funniest thing on planet Earth.
Dean finds himself smiling, and this time he actually does say, “You’re telling me, sister.”
“Just-” she takes her hand off of her eyes to flap it around instead- “get me to a gas station, you freak.”
“Roger.”
They sit in a bizarrely comfortable quiet until the next exit comes up about a mile down the highway stretch. It’s a main route, so every exit has at least one gas station, but this one has three. Dean decides to pull up to the Love’s travel stop, ‘cause he’s pretty sure that one’s gonna have the cleanest bathrooms. He finagles Baby into a spot before throwing her into park.
“Alright,” he claps his hands together and reaches for the door handle, stepping out into the late evening sun that paints the semi-trucks parked nearby in orange light. As expected, Claire follows in suit, and they both round the car on opposite sides before meeting in front of the trunk.
He pops it open with practiced ease, shooting a glance around in all directions more out of habit than anything else as he opens the hidden latch that leads to a whole lot of illegal shit. Dean’s life is full of illegal shit, though, including his own existence at this point. So it goes. And there, squeezed into the back left nook behind a carton of bullets, is a frankly obnoxious colored box.
“Aha!” Dean reaches in to pull them out, peering down at the multicolored wrappers inside. “Looks like we got green, pink, purple, and blue. You get to pick the flavor.” He holds the box towards Claire in offering.
Her eyebrows are almost touching her hairline, and she looks like she can’t decide whether to laugh or to punch him. “You are so fucking weird.”
Dean’s about to come back with something really witty, he promises, before he remembers something else that Charlie had told him. “Oh! I have pads, too, if you need those. Or do you need both? I don’t really know the logistics.”
“I am not having this conversation with you.”
“Why not? I’m being normal about it, you’re the one who’s getting all squirrelly.”
“Because this isn’t something we need to talk about. It’s weird! You’re like- my dad!” As soon as she says it, her face gets all red, and all Dean can do is stare gobsmacked. She takes advantage of his startled stillness, reaches into the box and pulls out a purple-wrapped tampon. “I’ll be back.” And just like that she nearly runs off towards the main building of the station.
Dean stands there in the Love’s parking lot with his jaw hanging open and a box of tampons in his hand like an idiot. Part of his brain is so- happy, an ecstatic yellow joy that’s crowing She thinks of me as her dad! and another part of his brain is mourning this heavy song of She doesn’t even have a dad and another part of his brain is horrified because Oh my god, Cas is wearing her dad. It’s a lot to handle while holding a box of tampons.
“Okay,” he says out loud to himself. “Alright.”
With that, he puts the tampons back into the trunk where he’d gotten them from, closes everything up, and then heads up to the driver’s seat to make himself comfortable. He very specifically does not think about the conversation they just had because there’re too many layers right here, right now, especially when Claire will be back any minute now. Instead, he tucks all of his loose thoughts into his pocket for later when he lays down tonight for bed.
It doesn’t take long for Claire to return. She opens the passenger side door and shuffles into the bench wordlessly. Once she’s settled, Dean asks, “All good?” and he means it in every way he can mean it. Periods and awkward conversations and saying too much and missing your dad.
“Yeah,” Claire responds, and she suddenly sounds tired. A bone-deep kind of exhaustion. She sighs. “Thanks for the tampon.”
“Don’t mention it, kiddo.”
Dean shifts the car into reverse, pulling onto the main road before heading towards the entry ramp back onto the highway. Neither of them mention what Claire had said. Instead, she settles in, resting her head against the glass of the door window and closing her eyes. He peers over at her and feels his heart swell up in protective softness, the way a dad’s heart should. The AC/DC tape is still playing in the deck, and he turns it down so that it’s a lullaby of white noise through the Impala. Drives the last two hours to Jody’s place just like that, sneaking glances at Claire every couple of miles.
…
Dean’s just up to get a glass of water, loose cotton pajama pants swishing around his calves with every silent step he takes, trying not to wake any of the girls in the house. He’ll leave tomorrow after some coffee with Jody and hugs all around as a precursor for the god-awful drive back to Kansas, but for now, the guest bedroom is his.
The house is dark and quiet as he makes his way back to the room. So quiet, in fact, that it’s easy to make out Claire’s whispering voice floating down the hallway from behind her cracked door.
“-glad to be back in my own bed. Motels are so gross. They smell like pot, piss, and shit, in that order,” she says. There’s a pause before she stifles a laugh and says, “You think you’re a comedian, but that’s actually verbal abuse and you’re a terrible person. Not cool.”
The rhythm of the conversation sounds like a phone call, and Dean’s theory is confirmed when Claire says, “I miss you, K. I wish you could have been here, especially- Oh my god, I have- No, this is the funniest thing that’s ever happened to me. So Dean is driving me home, we’re just sitting in the Impala, whatever, and I get my period.” There’s a pause. “Yes!” Claire hisses in response to whatever Kaia said.
And Dean didn’t mean to start eavesdropping, he was just curious why Claire was still up. Now, though, he’s definitely eavesdropping. He holds himself still outside of the door, scarcely breathing in case Claire hears him.
“It’s three days early and I’m completely unprepared. Yeah, yeah, rookie mistake. But- Do you wanna know what Dean said to me?” And Dean can hear the smile in her voice in a way that makes him smile too, down at the dark hardwood floors of the hallway, because he knows what’s coming next- “He goes, ‘I have tampons in the trunk if you need one’.”
A pause.
“I am so fucking serious, cross my heart, hope to die. The man had a whole box of tampons just- in there with all the guns. Like Glock, holy water, stake, tampons.” Another pause. “I know. I mean, Sam maybe. Cas would buy out the entire pad aisle trying to figure out what kind of pads I wear-” Dean has to consciously bite down a snicker at the truth of Claire’s words. He can see it in his head so clearly, Cas’s big terrified eyes taking in the tampons and the ultra-tampons and the slim-tampons and the pads and the maxi-pads, until he’d blow the entire credit card on feminine hygiene products because he cares about Claire so goddamn much. “But Dean… I don’t know.”
Kaia says something that makes Claire hum a low note. “I mean, it was kinda awkward, ‘cause it’s us, ya know. But he was really cool about it, actually.” Pause. “Yeah, he just sorta- offered me a tampon and that was it. I wasn’t gonna tell him at first but it came out, anyway, so. I don’t know.” Claire’s voice drops even further into something soft. “He made me feel really normal about it. The way this life is- You don’t get many chances to feel normal. He made me feel really normal.”
Dean has to step away or else he might do something embarrassing like cry or rush into Claire’s room and pull her into his arms. Instead, he takes his water back to the guest room with him the way he had originally planned to before his detour. With every barefoot step he takes, he thinks about how he knows from personal experience there is no greater compliment than someone making you feel normal. And Dean did that. He got to do that for his kid, and all it took was a fucking box of tampons.
He shuffles into the dark room and shuts the door behind him before setting the glass on the nightstand and sitting on the right edge of the bed. Looking up at the ceiling through watery eyes, he prays, “Thank you, Charlie.”
After a long second, he turns to pull back the covers and worm his way under them, laying down fully. On the wall across from him is a painting of a lake that he can just barely make out. He traces the lines of it in his mind as he drifts off to sleep, thinking about candy-colored tampons and how, in some unfeasible fashion, they correlate with being a good dad.