With Gabe kind of having the reputation as the 'troublemaker' does he ever have moments where he thinks that Sam and Dean love Cas more than him?
Hmm, I don’t really think so (luckily! That would be so sad omg) He and Cas need different things from Sam and Dean; They both want/need affection and love, but Cas has far more trouble identifying and differentiating between a hostile tone and a sarcastic/flippant/joking tone. He reacts to the word, rather than the tone.
So, if Dean were to say something along the lines of ‘you little SHIT’, Cas would fall over himself to correct whatever he did to make it happen while Gabe would cackle gleefully and Do The Thing even harder.
So, Dean and Sam might be tougher on him because he likes to stretch boundaries, but he ALSO knows they respect him and would never enforce those boundaries in a way that’s unfair. And in some way, he needs that? He needs to know that he can be ‘a little shit’ and be put in timeout and that immediately after he can climb up onto a kitchen chair and be fed pie, no hard feelings.
If they’d treat him like they treat Cas (very carefully), he’d get mulish and obstinate. He needs to know where he stands, what’s acceptable, what isn’t? Clear consequences (no cleaning your room = no candy, sorry) without those consequences being dire or harsh.
And, in some way, he’s lucky Cas is so easily handled. Cas won’t really ask for stuff, but Gabe will. So, statistically, Gabe gets told ‘no’ more, but overall he gets more ‘yes’ as well, because he’s vocal about just about everything :P It evens out!
omg this got away from me and I’m still not even sure if I really answered the question, gah. Have a tiny gabe to make up for it ^^;