Chapter Text
When Dean and Cas had driven away that morning to get groceries in the next town over, Sam had decided to use the peace and quiet to check out some of the lesser perused tomes on the shelves Dean called ‘The Shelves of the Misfit Knowledge’. While they were constantly cracking open the books on demons, ancient religions, curses, and so on, the books on the ‘misfit’ shelves appeared to be about monsters that had either gone extinct, no one had ever encountered (more fairy tales than encyclopedias), or magic that was rendered moot by the most basic of means.
One such book had been the list of childish curses like ‘step on a crack, break your mother’s back’ that only appeared if a superpowered being created them into being. Like that time with the wishing coin, or the antichrist boy whose strong beliefs gave power to the ideas themselves.
The first time Sam had told Dean what those books on that section of the shelving contained, Dean had just shaken his head. Having found cursed objects not in boxes to protect unsuspecting bystanders and random bottles around the bunker that weren’t labeled or listed anywhere was on point for the Men of Letters, so they left the books and just ignored them for the most part.
But it was Sam’s innate curiosity and unexpected feeling of having little to nothing to do that prompted him to find some non-research reading and just maybe have some fun looking into the minds of those who had thought to collect, write, and then store the information here in this forgotten place.
He crouched down to run his eyes over the bottom shelf, the one most often overlooked, especially because of his height, and a slight movement caught his attention. Flinching back from where he’d rested one hand on the shelf level with his head while he browsed, his eyes darted down to see the slip of paper slide a little further out from under the edge of the bottom of the bookshelf. Startled, he looked around.
“Dean? Cas?” He called into the larger room, even though he knew neither would be back for hours yet. With Dean’s current state of mind, he’d most likely stay out for most of the day, with Cas using his low power as an excuse to stay with him.
He looked back down and watched and listened for anything. There was no sound outside the usual in the bunker and the paper had stopped moving. With a shaky breath, he eased closer, tilting his head to get a better view.
It appeared to be a newspaper clipping. It wasn’t old or faded and the paper itself looked fairly new. He could only see half a face and a few words that were cut off by the wood of the bookshelf base, so it didn’t make any sense. He reached down to grasp the edge of the clipping to pull it further out, but it appeared to be stuck, as though the shelf were too heavy for it to move.
Frowning, he thought back to how easily it seemed to move earlier. Why would it be stuck now? He tried wiggling it gently but it didn’t feel stuck in any one section, but all the way across, as though a brick had been placed across it.
“Huh,” he grunted to himself and leaned further into the shelf to see if he could perhaps rock the bookshelf a little to get the paper free, and then had to jump back as there was a small but sharp click and the entire bookshelf shifted. His leap away was in fear of the entire shelf falling forward on top of him. However, it didn’t tilt and fall forward. It slid perfectly perpendicular to the floor and forward, the entire section jutting a few inches from the rest of the shelves.
Looking around the library again, nothing else had changed except his angle as he was now sitting on the floor, raised up on his elbows, looking up at the tables, chairs, and shelves. He huffed as he slowly rose back to his feet, then moved to where the shelf stook in stark relief to the others. One hand went out to put a slight push onto the wood and it slid backwards a little, but then back forward when he pulled his hand back.
He tilted his head and investigated the sides that were no longer hidden by the other shelves. To the left, it was smooth wood. On the right, it was the same except a carved indent a little above his waist height that he figured was a grip. Taking a deep breath after debating with himself about waiting on Dean and Cas to return, he felt his fingers dip into the indentation and then he pulled slowly.
The shelf slid out another few inches before the forward movement stopped on the left and the right began to swing around as though it was on a hinge. His eyebrows rose on his forehead as he realized it was on rails with an embedded hinge. And given that the bunker had been lost and unattended for so long, there was no rust, no squeal, plenty of give. An amazing design for a hiding space.
As soon as the shelf was swung partly out, he jumped to move one of the reading chairs they had moved into the library from some of the other rooms. With it moved out of the way, the full shelf swung out to stop smoothly facing the next bookshelf over. It didn’t feel like or sound like any of the books on the moving section even shifted, much less fell out.
The last click of the shelf stopping against the neighboring shelf triggered another click and a recessed light set into the wall the shelf had backed into cut on revealing not a blank wall, but a door with a tiny brass plaque, also recessed into the wood.
‘The Library’, the plaque declared quietly. It was a simple wooden door with a circular indent where a doorknob would be. In the indent was a wooden handle and it was all set, the handle and the plaque, so that when the bookshelf was in place, nothing would rise above the surface of the wall to break up the flat surface.
“The Library?” Sam asked to the air. No sooner were the words out of the his mouth when there was movement at the bottom of the door and he could see the newspaper clipping sticking out from under the recessed door edge, as was another slip of paper, this one a creamy linen envelope.
Making sure to keep far enough away from the door while he investigated, he gripped both the clipping and the envelope and tugged them free. As he stood up, he theorized both had been shoved under the door and perhaps the thickness of the envelope was what had gotten the clipping stuck. Now that he could see the clipping, he scanned over it. It was of the incident that they had already sent a hunter on out in California, but at the bottom someone had handwritten a word.
‘Fictional’ was all it said.
“Huh,” Sam grunted, moving the clipping to the bottom to get a better look at the envelope. The back wasn’t even sealed but it was also new and clean, despite having been shoved under a mysterious door and having been under a bookshelf that obviously had enough room to slide on the rails so should have had some dust build up. ‘I really need to look into what cleaning spell they used that keeps it dust free,’ he thought to himself idly.
Turning the envelope over, his world shifted. He felt his legs go wobbly and caught himself on the nearest hard surface, one of the pillars by the shelves.
‘Sam Winchester’ was written in flowing, golden script on the outside of the envelope.
As the bunker had been abandoned for decades and it was warded against everything except angels, seeing something addressed to him sent shivers over his body and his breathing racing. Swallowing hard, he struggled not to simply drop the envelope and call Dean to drop everything and come back.
No, he wasn’t going to give in to the fear. He was going to see what was in it and then call Dean. No need to panic both his brother and the angel if it was just a prank by one of the trickster gods who hadn’t taken kindly to the Winchesters getting ‘Loki’ killed, but who had so far held off on any retaliation.
Just in case it was something deadly, he sat at the nearest table and set his phone out with Dean’s number ready to dial as soon as he touched the screen. It took a minute or two to calm himself down and used some meditation techniques to center himself.
Once he’d blown out several deep breaths like a mother given birth, he opened it and slid out the equally creamy linen paper that was within. There was a thin line of shiny red ink all the way around the edge, with a strange but familiar plant motif repeating the rectangle half an inch in. At the top was a large compass logo and ‘Metropolitan Public Library’. In the center, it appeared blank, until there was a small glow and words magically scrolled across the paper in the same flowing script on the envelope.
‘You have been selected to interview for a prestigious position at the Metropolitan Public Library’.