Work Text:
The ink was still drying on the paper when it hit Sam what he’d just done. He, Benny, Dean, Cas, and Gabriel had just bought a house. Thanks to Gabriel, they could afford a big one, but Gabriel insisted that everyone’s name should be on the papers. “Holy shit. We’re homeowners?”
Dean put an arm around his little brother. “We’re homeowners, Sammy. Not bad for a couple of homeless drifters. Amazing what can happen when you meet the right people, isn’t it?”
Growing up homeless thanks to a paranoid father and dead mother hadn’t been easy, but they’d both made it work. Dean stuck it out until Sam was out of high school, and then the two of them agreed on four years going their separate ways. Sam had a full-ride scholarship to Stanford; Dean had a good ASVAB and no trouble fitting into the military mindset.
That’s where Dean met Benny. Benny had enlisted at the same time as Dean, and they served together in Iraq. Benny had joined up when he realized he was 21 years old and an alcoholic, and he figured the military would be good for him. It had – thanks to Dean, who he trusted enough to share that with, so that Dean could help him when the other soldiers went out drinking.
Toward the end of the fourth year, Sam and Dean talked to each other. Sam had been accepted to Stanford Law School, so Dean reenlisted for another three years. May as well, right? Benny had been thinking about going career, but decided to leave to stay with Dean instead. When their time was up, Dean, Sam, and Benny picked a city and rented an apartment.
Sam went into law, slowly working his way up the ranks toward District Attorney. Dean, with his experience fixing his Impala from the time he was little and working on Army vehicles, opened a garage. In one of his rare moments of giving in to sense, he decided to hire an actual tax accountant to figure out his garage’s taxes for him. Once everything was sorted out and processed and Dean realized his garage was doing better than he’d thought it was, he invited Castiel to join them for drinks. Castiel had misunderstood, thinking Dean was asking him out on a date. That had sent Dean into a bit of an identity crisis, slowly coming to terms with the fact that he was not straight like he’d always thought.
While he was figuring that out, Sam and Castiel had gotten closer, and they were the first to start officially dating. Dean had not been entirely happy about it, and ranted to Benny about it. “Don’t get me wrong, Cas is great, and I know he’s gonna treat my little brother right, but what did I do all this soul-searching and mental wrestling for if he’s just gonna give up on me and get with Sammy?”
Benny patted his shoulder. “Well, you know, Cas ain’t the only man out there who might be interested in you. Next time, it’ll be easier, since you’ve already figured yourself out.”
A week later, in the middle of an oil change on a gold Camaro, Dean realized what Benny was saying and felt like a complete idiot. The car’s owner, a short guy who had decided to stay and eat a lollipop while he watched Dean work, shot up an eyebrow. “Uh-oh. Not sure I like the idea of a complete idiot working on my car.”
Dean glared at him, but kept working. “Cars, I get. People are crazy.”
The eyebrow lowered, and his voice held a ton of sympathy now. “Family or datefriend?”
“Yes.”
“Heh. What’s going on?”
“What do you care?”
The guy waved his lollipop at the car. “You’re fixing my car, maybe I can fix your people.”
“Whatever.” Dean explained the situation with Castiel and Benny. “I think Benny meant himself. Just took me a week to catch on.”
“Oof. Bit dense there, yeah. You really that upset about losing Cassie to your brother?”
Dean thought that over. It was a fair question. “Not really? Sam’s happy, so I’m happy, I just don’t like how it happened.”
“Better man than me. It’s not exactly the same, Cassie’s my cousin and Sam never really responded to me any time I flirted with him, but I’m still kind of mad at my cousin for getting with someone I liked.”
Dean bonked his head on the hood of the car from straightening up too fast. “Wait. You’re Gabriel Altyn?”
Gabe looked over his shoulder at where Benny was flipping through some paperwork. “Your office guy didn’t tell you my name?”
“Generally doesn’t, since he’s the one dealing with you. Wow.”
“I take it Sam mentioned me, then. Since you recognize my name.”
“Yeah, said he tried to hide any time you showed up at his office, which apparently you do a lot?”
Gabriel winked and waved his lollipop again. “What can I say? I run a candy store. People shoplift from me all the time.”
“And you prosecute?”
“Depends. Repeat offenders, people who are old enough to know better, yes.”
“Huh.” Dean leaned down to get back to work. “You’re kind of a dick, you know that?”
“Hey, if they’re old enough to know better, they ought to be old enough to deal with the consequences of their actions, and if they’re repeat offenders, then obviously I didn’t get through to them with my stern warning.” Gabriel shrugged and popped his lollipop into his mouth.
“Yeah, but harassing a dude at work is not a good way to get him to go out with you. Sam was so uncomfortable he had to hide, and I raised him not to run from things. That’s why I’m calling you a dick.”
“Fair enough.” Gabriel leaned back in his chair and shrugged. “So if you’re wrong about Benny, I shouldn’t come back here and hit on you myself?”
Dean rolled his eyes. “Save it for the bar.”
Before he got a chance to talk to Benny, Dean got blindsided by his brother and Castiel. Turned out that neither of them had thought that Castiel being with Sam had meant he wasn’t still interested in Dean, too. “You’d just go along with that? Sharing your boyfriend with your brother?”
Sam shrugged. “Why not? We shared everything else. I know you take care of the things you love, you’re not gonna break him, you can wait your turn to play with something… and with you friendzoning Benny…”
“That wasn’t friendzoning, that was me being clueless. Realized it today… right in front of your asshole of a cousin, Cas.”
“Which one?”
Dean blinked. “Okay, I’m a little concerned that you have to ask that question. Gabriel.”
Castiel smiled. “Believe it or not, Gabriel’s one of the better ones.”
Sam jumped. “Gabriel Altyn’s your cousin?”
“Yes. I hope you can understand why I wouldn't mention that before, given how he's been treating you. He’s mad at me right now, but hopefully he’ll stop making you uncomfortable at work.”
Sam crossed his arms. “You got with me to teach your cousin a lesson?”
“No, I got with you because we get along well, you’re very attractive, and I enjoy being in your company. Teaching Gabriel a lesson was just a nice side benefit.”
“I know. It was a joke." Sam hugged Castiel and kissed the top of his head. "So Dean, um, guess you should probably talk to Benny first, if you’re wanting to clear that up…”
“Yeah. I’ll let you know how that goes.”
Dean found Benny at their apartment, kicked back with a chocolate milkshake and a Dracula movie. “Hey.”
“Hey, chief. Any idea why Gabriel Altyn would come back at close to leave you a hundred dollar tip?”
“Nope. Maybe he just likes me? I do have a very winning personality.”
“Yeah, which is why you’ve got me handling all the talking-to-people parts of the job. Here you go.” Benny handed Dean the hundred-dollar bill.
Dean rolled his eyes as he saw the note tucked into the folded bill. “Or he didn’t learn anything from our conversation and his cousin stealing the guy he was interested in and he wanted to leave me his phone number. Dick.” Benny huffed, but didn’t say anything. “Hey, uh, Benny?”
“Yeah?”
“Last week, when you said there were other guys who’d be interested… were you talking about you?”
Benny turned to look at Dean properly. “Yeah.”
“Seriously? Since when?”
“Yeah. Had a thing for you for a while, just figured you were straight because you only ever talked about girls, and of course the whole military culture thing, you don’t just ask someone that. Hadn’t thought of it in years until you told me what happened with Cas.” Benny gave Dean a half-smile. “Hey, don’t worry about it, brother. If you’re not interested, you’re not interested, and that’s that. I’m not gonna get weird on you.”
“That’s the thing, though. You’ve been my best friend for years, and turning that into a relationship, that sounds like a great idea.”
Benny swung his feet off the desk to sit up straight. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. There is one other thing we probably should talk about, though.”
“Cas and Sam talked to you already.” Benny settled back down, feet back up on the coffee table.
“Yeah. And dude, I don’t have a problem saying no if it would make you uncomfortable, but if you are comfortable with it…”
“Sure. I like Cas and Sam.”
There were some growing pains and adjustments settling into things, the second-biggest one happening as Sam and Benny started hanging out more. Dean just rolled his eyes when he came home to the two of them wearing guiltier faces than a Bassett hound who’d been caught drinking out of the toilet. “Kiss or something bigger?”
“It… just a kiss, we realized what…” Sam stuttered out.
Castiel smiled at them both. “Okay. You two have been good about me and Dean being together, so why not?” Dean nodded.
The biggest growing pain, though, came when Gabriel ran into Dean at the bar and hit on him properly. At first, Dean was unimpressed, but Gabriel was persistent, and slowly but surely, Gabriel won his way into Dean’s heart. Once he was in there, Sam’s heart wasn’t far behind.
And then they started talking about moving in together. The problem was finding and affording a place big enough for all of them – not that any of them were poor anymore, by any means, but four out of five of them were not exactly rich, either. “Which is why you boys have me,” Gabriel said. “Seriously. Find a house, I bet we can afford it. Forget dividing things five ways evenly, I could pay Dean’s entire take-home pay every month and not notice, so I have no trouble covering whatever extra cost it ends up being if we all did what Dean and Benny could afford times five.”
With that in mind, it didn’t take long to find the perfect home for the five of them. And now, they owned it. A week later, they were all moved in. “You know what this house needs?” Dean said.
“Someone to load the dishwasher like he said he would?” Sam shot at him.
Dean stuck his tongue out at Sam. “Hush or I’ll change my mind about this.”
“That’s not exactly fair to the rest of us, is it, Chief?” Benny leaned on the doorframe.
“No, I guess not.”
“Is it a chocolate fountain and a stripper hotline’s number added to the emergency contacts list?” Gabriel guessed.
“NO,” Sam and Castiel shouted in unison.
“We need a dog,” Dean said. Everyone turned to stare at him. “What? I’m allergic to cats.”
Sam started bouncing. “Can we get two dogs?”
“If we can find two good dogs who get along, I don’t see why not,” Castiel said. “Benny? Gabe?”
“Be nice to have some dogs around. We do have a nice big yard for them to run around in, and good security, too,” Benny said.
“Sure, I like dogs. Wanna go look for some furballs now?” Gabriel said.
At the shelter, Sam fell in love with every dog in the place. Dean was a lot more particular, vetoing the Yorkie that Gabriel pointed out. “I said a dog, not a glorified stuffed animal.” After several rounds of back and forth, they settled on two: a Beagle mix named Snoopy, and a black lab mix named Chester, both about three years old and who got along well at the shelter.