#in collab w autisticandroids :-)

[davidfosterwallaceandgromit]

Dean and Cas are both nightmare PTA parents, because their usual personality issues are switched. In this setting, dean is the one who causes problems on purpose (flirting with pta moms, homewrecking) and cas is the one who is like “i must control everything.” 

The slippery slope of shared involvement in this organization is that cas develops a vendetta against a rival mom named Helen, and takes dean, who is just having a fun time flirting with the moms & being a homewrecker, and recruits him to run interference and gather intelligence on her campaign for PTA presidency while CAS launches his OWN ruthless campaign for PTA presidency. 

Importantly, nobody knows the first thing about either of them,

because they are trying to live simultaneously in the smalltown settled-down world and also their world of incredible violence

Nobody knows what the angry trenchcoat dad’s deal is because they have never had a normal conversation with him 

but the moms speculate WILDLY about dean

and they hear weird things from their kids who know Jack

But in order for the scheme to work, none of these women know that Cas and Dean are associated with the same kid, never mind with each other.

So,

It’s been abt a year since Cas became an overly involved PTA parent and established himself as a rogue element in the Smith Center United School District, where Jack attends the high school and plays trumpet in the marching band. Cas is off on a hunt, asks Dean to go to the wednesday meeting for him. 

Dean goes, and is colossally bored

Until the coffee hour in the gym

Bc the PTA moms are VERY interested in this new hot dad 

Dean of course enjoys the attention and flirts back shamelessly

talks up his kid jack like “Oh yeah his mom is dead, it’s so sad :(” (because Dean is a terrible person) 

so normally, Jack just takes the bus or flies to school if he’s going to be late (bc he overslept after staying up late playing Portal 2, or just wanted to hang out for breakfast). But once Dean starts getting attention from the moms he can’t resist the drama and offers to drive Jack to smith center HS. 

Jack says yes of course

Dean waves ‘hello ladies’ to the carpool moms, roguish wink

this will backfire later on when one of them starts following him around town to figure out where the fuck he lives

Next PTA meeting rolls around, cas is heading out, and dean asks to go with. cas is like wtf?

Dean’s agenda is: 1. i love attention and flirting and destroying the nuclear family. and 2. if I piss off cas enough, he will make out with me IN the back seat of the Impala IN the school parking lot

so at the post-meeting coffee hour in the gym

Cas is late bc he’s discussing something w another parent

Dean is flirting with the moms again

and they are complaining about mr kline, the angry trench coat dad

cas comes back into the gym and sees what’s going on, gets jealous/territorial, drags dean out

after dean’s goal #2 has been achieved and he is fixing cas’s collar in the back seat of the impala, cas is like okay hilarious (not) but do not flirt with those women again. 

And dean’s like (fixing cas’s tie) dude, those women, the other moms, they do not like you. especially not helen, and she’s running for PTA president — and cas is like, wait hang on, she’s doing what? 

little does Dean know that helen is cas’s #1 PTA enemy, and if she wins, she will cut the music/theater budget in favor of increasing sports funding. cas cannot allow this to happen, but this is useful intel

So cas is like well....... what else did you find out? 

so begins the campaign of conspiracy and cahoots

the local moms fawn over dean every wednesday at the pta coffee hour and then on sunday at the church coffee hour they discuss him extensively

his cover story is that he’s a bartender at a place called doyle’s up in webber (40+ miles away, no one would ever drive out and check, right?). prevailing theory is that he’s ex-military 

[looking at Jack's soccer registration forms] "Their address is on Bromfield road. but there aren't any HOUSES on bromfield road"

after witnessing dean do some special ops shit, a new theory is born that he’s in witness protection

they also hear things through their kids cause 1. Jack is a bad liar and 2. He IS doing magic tricks to look cool for the other kids.

Dean’s cover story about the bar is a shield for reality, which is that he and cas run a hunter pub/diner, called rocky’s or the roadhouse 2.0 or w/e, but it’s in a weird secret off-the-beaten path location that no Lebanon/normal people should stumble upon

Because Dean—now that he is out and settled down and going to AA and living a stable life—now lies about new stuff. His child. His family. His normal human job. Just because. 

No one knows what the angry trenchcoat dad does or which kid is his bc no one has ever had a normal or personal conversation with him.

“What is he?” Accountant? Community college accounting professor? Realtor who only sells business parks? Lawyer for realtors? Is he in publishing? 

whatever it is that he does for work, it is causing him a LOT of job stress, that much we can tell. He is using this as an outlet for Something. We have concerns. 

Cas knows all of Jack’s teachers personally and has also menaced various administrators, but in the PTA meetings he is just sort of a nondirectional force of nature not associated with any specific child.

Jack is a band and theater kid of course. He plays trumpet in the marching band in the fall, and the colorguard girls love him. Additionally he is also in the crew for the musical, and he’s also a weird forensics kid (speech team). 

jack on the trumpet from a distant room in the bunker: doot. doot. doot. doot. doot. doot. 

Dean in the kitchen: 😐😐

Cas, putting a hand on dean's arm: we're being supportive

Sports subplot: Dean gives Jack a (relatively gentle) hard time about doing music and theater but not trying any sports. To gain dean’s approval Jack is trying out the soccer league this fall but it’s not really his thing. 

This is relevant shan’t elaborate.

Eventually Jack gets roped into the scheme, but he is not happy about it because he does not like lying.

Cas must destroy helen because of her anti-performing arts agenda but also because she was the first person to be rude to him at his first-ever PTA meeting, and bc the moms function on midwestern church lady politeness rules, they all exclude him together (sin of exclude the freak)

So Cas, in response, commits the Sin of Nemesis

(in his eyes she represents the threat of local (and more broadly, human) culture excluding Jack) 

bc Sin of Nemesis is Cas’s fatal flaw in this story that means when the stakes get higher he will Go Too Far (gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss); his numerous Sins of Jealousy are just a fun subplot

Once, one of the parents witnesses Cas doing some angel magic when he doesnt think anyone is looking. Like he spills something, tries to mop it up, then gives up and just snaps it. 

Later on in the election when things have gotten heated, someone else spots him using his super strength to move a large object (for sabotage purposes) and thinks they imagined it.

kathleen (friend of Helen) is suspicious of Dean’s whole deal, even more so after she and her husband actually end up stopping at the bar in Webber, and she casually tells the owner that she knows Dean, and the guy is like ? who? 

“you know? dean campbell? Tall, chiseled, dresses like a lumberjack?”

“ma'am, I don't know anyone by that description, and the only people allowed behind this bar are me and my wife”

kathleen already doesn’t like dean because publicly flirting every wednesday isn’t proper, and also he’s distracting helen from her campaign and also from her, like, there’s a little jealousy there

but when she tries to tell Helen, of course, helen brushes it off

Dean is running interference on the enemy campaign

By distracting Helen and the moms and being a homewrecker

but also by infiltrating / getting inside info about Helen’s plans

He keeps it above-board — he never meets outside of the pta meetings and never accepts invitations to drinks/sunday dinner (gotta go, night shift at the bar. etc) bc if he actually started going to knitting circle or the pyramid scheme container parties he would definitely get too deep into it and also blow their cover 

And where is Sam in all this you ask? He and Eileen live a 2hr drive away with their newly adopted child. Though they come down for sunday dinner once a week, the campaign is never mentioned by dean or cas. they know absolutely nothing about it. 

This all will culminate when Cas eventually wins (he will, of course, win, despite a near-miss when he almost goes too far with the schemes, gaslight gatekeep girlboss), with grand reveal, when cas is up on stage in the gym, giving his big acceptance speech, and finishes it with “and last of all, i would like to thank my husband... dean :)” The chaos is instant and complete.

[davidfosterwallaceandgromit]

more from the PTA extended universe

One day, rival mom kathleen finally gets fed up with Dean and decides she's going to tail him for real. Unfortunately, she just happens to pick a day when he's doing extremely normal and regular errands. 

Drops off Jack. Post office and stands in line for a while. He gets a sandwich. He goes to the gun store. He buys some groceries. 

kathleen: [angrily watching through binoculars]

Only thing she does see is him talking to Cas at Jack’s soccer game. she does not realize they are together bc they meet like spies in a park and stand on opposite sides of the chain link fence to have their conversation. 

She tells Helen all this and says she suspects they could be working together and Helen says kathleen please, you are being ridiculous.

I really like imagining the accidental intersection of the PTA world and the world of incredible violence that they normally live in. Like did i see you burning a body in the cemetery? No, surely that was not you.

“Is that a knife sheath on your ankle? At this high school theater production of Pippin?” (Jack is crew. Is he using a little psychic powers to move things when no one is looking or when it’s dark? Perhaps.) What? Oh, yeah. It’s uh. for hunting. “Oh of course, hunting. A normal activity that my husband also does!”

“but you still don’t really need to bring a knife to the musical?” Ha yeah. a knife. that’s all i have. one single knife.

Working theory among the moms is that Dean’s in witness protection from formerly being part of the mob. Kathleen is a strong proponent of this theory too, except that it makes her say “...so he’s dangerous!!” while the rest of them are like “ooh!” like how ppl used to find whitey bulger hot

Kathleen tries to do some research to back up this theory but unfortunately she is not very tech literate so after she finishes reading about midatlantic mobs of the ‘00s and ‘10s on FBI.gov, she hits a dead end. She asks her husband what he thinks and he just asks if she’s been rewatching The Sopranos again

Dean loves The Sopranos btw. That’s where he gets his ‘face-cradle other men in moments of concern’ thing

PTA nemesis Helen’s son Sawyer is: a jock, raised Christian but ambivalent about all that; he plays football in the fall (running back) but his true passion is a weird niche sport: Curling.

Jack is aware of him and avoids him bc he’s afraid of letting slip something about Cas. But then gym teacher pairs them up for the badminton tournament and they get to talking.

Helen's surprising humanizing moment is when sawyer tells jack that his mom is very supportive of the curling and drives him long hours to the tournaments during the season

Close call: somebody’s sister-in-law Mandy is in town for a visit, and Mandy has a true crime hobby. when she sees Dean she recognizes him, and is like. Is that fucking murderer and fugitive Dean Winchester? [THE dean?] “No, his name is Dean Campbell?” “What?” “What?”

Another close call: gay teacher Mr. Curtis flirts with Dean, and Cas does NOT like that. (burly bear guy, science teacher at the middle school, does he look like a certain vampire friend? Perhaps)

dean flirts back at him, and all the moms are like :o well. i guess he's a queer. but we can work with that

One mom: “Oh he must be bisexual, I know about this from Shadowhunters:) which I watch with my daughter. He’s like Magnus Bane!”

Anyway Mr. Curtis hunts, like normal hunting, bowhunting maybe, and is like “you hunt?” and dean’s like “actually yeah,” and the teacher is like we should go together sometime! And Cas does NOT like this, and almost blows their cover

[overhearing this muttered conversation with his angel hearing during the meeting (which he is running because it’s the performing arts subcommittee and he’s the committee chair)]: [[abruptly bangs gavel loudly]] THIS CONCLUDES THIS WEEK’S MEETING. GOOD NIGHT EVERYONE HAVE A VERY SAFE DRIVE HOME.

One day in town, Dean does some heroic physical violence in public, witnessed by one of the moms and her child. Guy in the grocery store goes berserk, Dean tackles him, saving mom and child. It’s very dreamy of him

What they don’t know is that the guy had a spell on him as a direct result of some case they’re working on, inadvertently inviting the forces of darkness into Lebanon

But it’s still very sexy of him and the mom and kid who witness this will be telling this story over and over for WEEKS.

Mom tells it w great relish at church coffee time.

Kid tells this story with great relish at school. Jack: oh, god...

This is the point where Jack’s "your dad is so cool" reputation tips from "yes" to "this is stressing me out"

If the PTA eu is doing its job then it should be parodying “we protect suburban/small-town white america,” and one way it should do so is that the people actually bringing the danger INTO town are of course, them. And there’s always the risk of being found out, and ejected. But they’ll manage to stay under the radar and keep living these two coexisting, ultimately incompatible lives.