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"Alright, Imma meet Cas and Garth in Lowell,
Mass. He thinks there might be some subspecies of werewolf moving through, kinda weird in such an urban area, but whatever. Sure you've got everything you need?" Dean checked one last time before leaving.
"You went to the store this morning at the butt crack of dawn, then brought half of it home, yeah. I'll be fine, just a tiny cold. I'm not even actually cold," Sam assured while he hunched over his Bengal Spice tea with honey.
Dean whirled around, appearing to reconsider something. "It's warm inside. I'll check the thermostat on my way out. But it's also May, temperatures can't figure out what they want to do from one day to the next."
"I'm fine, I promise. Anyway, you better get going. Drive safe, jerk."
When Dean took off, Sam put his dishes away and tucked in for a nap.
Upon awakening, he felt unusually comfortable. He always slept in soft pajamas, but he swore he felt nothing between the simple, thin cotton sheets and his skin.
Feeling much cooler than when he'd gone to bed, he lifted the covers and discovered he was sans any kind of clothes. Strange, because he couldn't remember divesting himself before falling asleep, which presented him with a mystery along with the conventional necessity of more clothing.
Tossing the covers back, he sat up, rubbing his face. With a headache threatening to take hold, he could do with a few motrin. Opening his underwear drawer, he balked at it then pulled out the one immediately below, finding it too, was empty.
What the heck? He'd just done laundry yesterday, his drawers should be full of clothing. Certainly underwear, at the very least. Opening every drawer in his room, then his closet, he didn't know whether to be pissed or panic. Marching into the large bathroom, Sam retrieved one of Dean's dead guy robes, not caring in the slightest how ridiculously small it was. It would do for now, until he found where his clothes were hidden.
Room by room, he searched. The laundry room was empty and Dean's room was alarmingly void of any clothing as well. As usual, he'd packed a week's worth of clothes in his duffle bag, but that didn't account for the rest of his missing wardrobe collection. Hell, even the carefully stored cowboy costumes were missing. What on Earth had happened?
Tearing through the Bunker, Sam came up completely empty. He couldn't go shopping in a fucking bathrobe, an Amazon order was completely out of the question, and he wasn't calling Dean with this because his brother would just say he needed to bring his fever down ASAP.
Sam was on his own and in needed of determining what to do about his clothing situation, er- lack thereof. He could use a good soak, so he drew himself a scalding hot bath in hopes the steam would aid his sinuses. Cautiously sinking into the perfect water temperature to which he'd also added lavender bath salts, Sam almost fell asleep again.
He miraculously shook the sleep off when hearing a strange, albeit comforting sound of a wooden sailing vessel creaking and groaning from the pitches and swells of a tumultuous ocean. He even began to feel the gentle rocking motion. It was comforting, and yet, unsettling all at once.
But nevermind that, he was getting too hot and with his sinus headache starting to improve, he got out with the firm intention of finding his damn clothes. Once he'd toweled off, he looked for the robe and found it missing.
"What the everloving hell?" Now he knew something was absolutely working against him.
Wrapping the towel around his waist, he went back into the kitchen to see if Jody's girls were playing some prank. And yet, he found nothing, to his dismay.
Sam made some tea and sat in the kitchen blowing on it for a while, noting how the kitchen's normally cooler temperature was somehow keeping him warm, even with just a thin bath towel wrapped around his waist. From the moment he first sipped his tea, the Irish Tea Song, "Róisín O" came drifting pleasantly from the radio.
"All that I want from you is your smile
I haven't seen one quite like it in a while…."
Sam tilted his head, then turned around to face the radio.
"....So let me know I'm welcome in your lands
I'm feeling a little bit strange today
I've been sitting around in a daze
Yeah, I think I'll make another cup
All that I want from you is a sign
Let me know that it's alright to smile.."
He looked over at the island and spied a familiar book atop a few others which had appeared out of nowhere. It's green cover was worn and tattered, conveying a reader would find information on the art of Divination on the inside cover.
"Yeah, I think I'll make another cup, tea
Yeah, I think I'll make another cup, tea…"
Pursing his lips, he realized it wasn't such a bad idea. If this was a spirit or Lord help them, another trickster, at least it would keep him busy until ridding the bunker of it instead of just sitting on his still naked duff.
In the store room, he collected the athame and water he'd need for the spell, setting the water on a sunny window sill of the pool room to solar charge. He'd wait until the moon was high to do the ritual.
Next he made a stop in the archives, having discovered the teleported book which appeared incredibly familiar, he remembered he'd been meaning to sink his teeth into something with a little more 'bite.' As he perused the books, he swore he saw one literally jump from the shelf as if to say, "Pick me! Oh please pick me!"
He bent to retrieve it and pulled something in the region of the boys, or rather, the boys reminded him of already having pulled something beforehand and that he was still without his goddamn clothes.
"WOULD BOXER BRIEFS BE TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR!" Sam bellowed, frustrated as all get out.
He clutched the book to his chest and hobbled down the hall, retrieving his tea before barricading himself in his room, hopeful for some blessed respite from whatever was going on with the bunker. At the foot of his bed, rested three or four neatly folded blankets.
Before layering them over his covers, he pulled a small bottle of Jack from his dresser drawer and emptied a large amount of it into his tea. Sam downed it at once, coughed, then buried himself and his book under the blankets.
Only then did he get a decent look at the monograph fate had flung at him in the archives room. "Malleus Maleficarum," or "Hammer of the Witches" which was a treatise on the 'Body Fluid Spewing Factories' as Dean referred to them.
This specific edition hadn't been in the bunker archives for eons collecting dust. This was a book he'd seen before. Hell, he'd even read it before learning that the bunker existed.
Carefully examining the spine, he found it bowing in the precise spot in which he'd expected it. Afterall, he'd been the one to awaken Dean at Bobby's kitchen table in the wee hours of morning, upon hearing him spill a bottle of Wild Turkey falling asleep during research. But Sam had to wonder, just how did Bobby's book get in the bunker?
Sleep pulled him under before he could ruminate much longer on the matter, or any other.
-***-
When Sam awakened, his congestion was gone but the aches and chills persisted. He found a fresh cup of tea greeting him upon his desk, it's steam climbing in lovely, cozy tendrils. Checking his watch, he saw that it was well past sundown. He kept one blanket around his waist and another around his upper body. Sniffing the tea and detecting no sign of alcohol, he sipped it, determining it was a perfectly steeped cup of Oolong which immediately refreshed his foggy mind.
Schlepping down the hall to the pool room, Sam set up a tray where'd he placed of the solar charge water by the window. He closed his eyes, stilling himself to channel, then held the black handled athame over a silver bowl. He took his time, pouring the charged water over the tip of the blade in a divination practice known as scrying.
As water trickled down the blade into the bowl, Sam watched the blade's reflection change, just as he'd hoped. In theory it would reveal the identity of the spirit or entity loitering around a person, troubling or bothering them. But when Sam scryed, all he saw in the reflection was room upon room of the bunker. That didn't seem right.
Taking stock of the situation, he made sure the water had been placed in the sunlight. He verified it was a black handled blade. He'd channeled properly. They'd sent Mrs. Butters on her merry way so it wasn't her, nor was Kevin hanging around. Sam was certainly confused, but was also still so tremendously tired.
On his way back to his room he decided to select a few more books for his inner reading dragon. He roamed the shelves carefully. Slowly. Examining various books, their spines, and fly covers. In a few, he found familiar notes or symbols drawn; those were the ones which by some miracle had found their way into the bunker..from Bobby's.
It was incredible how the man's collection had slowly been making its way into the bunker archives, book by beloved book. Almost as if the bunker were somehow reaching through space to the aged storage facility in Sioux Falls they'd procured years earlier upon Bobby's death.
Some, of course had been seized by Jody and Sam was glad if it, for he knew she and the girls were in need of their own well curated collection. Yet with regards to the one his peepers were currently taking in, it seemed the bunker had been poaching these precious monographs from what was likely a mold infested space to somewhere relatively temperature controlled and clean.
When he went to sleep that night, he rested more soundly than he had in a long while. And when awakening the following morning, the bunker was so warm Sam got the crazy notion in his head to go swimming...naked. Dean probably did it all the time, so why couldn't he? As long as he shocked the water well enough afterward, he deserved a little freedom and comfort too. So that's precisely what he did.
After taking some over the counter decongestant and making himself more tea, he spent the day swimming and resting beside the pool, finding the new clothing-free lifestyle beyond freeing. It seemed the bunker was personalizing its thermostat to his body's exact degree of comfort so he no longer felt chilled since kicking his fever. He spent the day reading, dozing, and swimming around the pool, even soaking up the free rays for the time the room's windows were in the sun's direct path.
Later, once he'd showered and was bumming around the kitchen gathering this and that for a comforting vegan dinner, he realized he was feeling far more like himself than he had in a few days. Pulling his hair into a bun, he got to work chopping veggies. Mid stir fry, he whipped around to find some neatly folded clothes upon the breakfast bench along with socks and a pair of slippers.
"What the heck? Really?" He asked aloud to whomever was haunting his still very naked ass.
That's when the radio turned on again by itself
blaring Ida Maria's silly song:
"I won't mind
if you take off all your clothes
Come on, take them off
'Cause I like you so much better when you're naked
I like me so much better when you're naked
I like you so much better when you're naked
I like me so much better when you're naked"
There was a sentient something or someone in this Bunker. And if all it had done was render him more comfortable in his own skin, they couldn't be that bad.
Sam decided..screw it. He was warm and kept far enough away from the stove while cooking, he could wait a little longer to get his clothes on. Hell, he was even moving and grooving juuuust a smidge when hearing the loud THWUNK! of Dean dropping his duffle on the bench, having returned early from the hunt.
"Wow, this is.. a whole new side of you...literally."
Sam guffawed and the radio turned itself off. He didn't miss a beat telling him about the bizarro bunker experience he'd had.
And at the end of his long winded explanation, all Dean had to say was, "Wait. Since when do we have a pool?"