Chapter Text
This whole thing started because Dean and Dad doing research is like multiplying by zero. Sam can actually take reasonable notes instead of copying, write neatly for later, and read for hours without falling to pieces. Plus, as Dad likes to remind Sam, reading and research is best left to women. And if any magic that wasn’t strictly required was to be used, it was the domain of women...or worse. So Sam, eager to help, had taken on the burden of research, notes, reading, everything they actually needed to know for each hunt they were going on. After all, Dad wanted him to join in, and Dean certainly couldn’t help on this. And the job was just like homework, right? Except it was for the family.
Dad should have never given it to him. There was the information that Dad and Dean needed, written up cleanly on notebook paper, double spaced, sifted out of book after book, but it was the other information Sam treasured. Most of the books assumed you were trying to do the things in them -- perform rituals, use magic, understand the world around you. The authors of the books were Godly people, after all, so it couldn’t be doing any harm, right? Magic’s just for girls, after all...and to Dad, that was what Sam was. The pretty little girl, the old ball and chain.
Sam had taken up divination recently, especially since he’d wanted to keep track of Dean and Dad while they were gone. Pendulums and cards were first, but water scrying was getting easier, even if it sometimes made his head hurt and his muscles ache in nervous tension. But he hadn’t been sure how to get into augury, until he and Dean had been set to flattening shell casings for scrap money a few weeks ago.
They were in Idaho now, and the shell casings Sam had skimmed had served him well. The local magpies weren’t going to get any food from him, and he wasn’t giving up high-value coins to get them interested. But casings were just the thing for good, clever birds, a reasonable price for augury. At first, a few of them would wait and watch for Sam, wondering if they could get anything out of the small human. When they referred to him as a girl, however, Sam chased them off, shrieking between his teeth with rage until they got it right. He was a boy, nothing else. Especially when Dad was out.
Now, each of the three blocks to and from the bus stop served as a separate panel, allowing for more complex messages to be related daily, each written down in Sam’s working notebook. The most common arrangements were 5-4-2, indicating Dean had gotten something for them to eat that night, and 6-4-2, which indicated Sam was going to come home to an empty room and have a blessedly quiet evening to himself. Sometimes, there was 4-1-5, which was, to Sam’s mind, the worst message you could receive -- Dad was home, and it was back to being a girl until Dad was gone out again.
Tonight, there was a new pattern. 2-4, that sounded good, though whether it was going to refer to him or Dean, he wasn’t sure. Until he got to the third block. Six would be normal, but there were more birds tonight. Two more, to be exact. Eight…
Seven’s Heaven, eight is Hell
And nine’s the Devil his own self.
Sam’s hand dove into his pocket for his lucky paperweight, then darted to his neck, checking the lines of leather and chain that meant his scapular and his Mary. Could he run fast enough? Would he be safe inside? Was Dean home or wasn’t he?
A man now stood in front of him, just far away enough to talk easily, but not so close Sam could stick him and run.
“I’m sorry for scaring you.” the man said. Sam was pretty sure his name was Rod, and that Dean argued with him about girls when he was home…
“Demons lie.” Sam snapped. Something good about the oversize clothing he wore was that other people couldn’t see him tense.
“It was an accident.” Rod-who-is-not-Rod says, looking as awkward and clumsy as usual, though in a slightly different way. “I saw you were upset, so I...I was thinking maybe I could give you a present. I don’t want anything--”
“Bullshit.” Sam said, his voice an angry hiss. “Can’t get something for nothing.”
“I can make you a boy.” the demon says. “That’s what you want, right? I don’t want your soul, or anything. I just want to give you something nice.”
The whiny sulk in the demon’s voice sounds exactly like Rod, though whether it’s because of the possession or because of the actual demon’s emotions is unclear. But what he’s promising…
“Demons don’t do something for nothing.”
“Well...yeah…” The demon-Rod’s face falls, as if he’s trying to make the best of a bad situation. “But you get stuff for nothing from us. We like you. You’re...” he shrugs, and Sam is wondering if he could be forgiven for stabbing this one.
“My dad hunts demons.” Sam said. “And he’ll get you too, when I tell him.”
“I can get you your body. Plus a fifty percent discount!” Rod-not-Rod says, way too chirpily for a demon, or for ninety percent of Rod’s interactions with humanity at large. “You’re gonna be our king one day. So maybe we could...it’s not fair, you being all...”
“Like this.” Like a girl. Like being too short to reach anything. Like not being strong enough, physically strong, to stand up to bullies, or Dean, or Dad. Like having a voice that sounds like a mouse trying to do public speaking for the first time.
The demon began to detail its plan in typical Rod fashion -- loudly and slowly, as though ordering over the phone.
And Sam listened.