Ouch.

The sun hasn't even begun to peek through the curtains when Seth wakes up grumpy from a suddenly fitful sleep. There was still another hour and a half before he really had to be awake, up and moving, rousing Roman from sleep and fighting tooth and nail to get Dean up and out of bed, but it seemed that Seth wasn't about to spend that precious time resting.

His back was hurting. It wasn't like the dull throb of a bad fall on the job, where the whole expanse of his shoulders and hips felt like one big bruise-this pain was sharp and acute, narrowed down only to his shoulder blades, like someone had pinned them with knives. Seth grunted as he rolled from his back, propping himself on his elbows and glaring at the neon green numbers of the digital alarm clock on the bedside table through his sleep-bleary eyes.

5:45.

He sighed, quietly so as not to wake the others and shimmied out of bed. Dean was snoring softly on the adjacent bed (the guy slept on his face; how was he even able to breathe, let alone snore?), Roman taking up the one in the other room, breathing quietly (to Seth, it reminded him of a hibernating black bear), and as Seth padded across the floor to the bathroom, neither of them stirred. For nights like these, Seth had learned to keep a bottle of ibuprofen to dull the pain until he could get some proper treatment, mostly to be taken on car rides and the like. He slipped into the bathroom and closed the door before turning on the lights, squinting at the bright intensity of the fluorescent bulbs.

His bag lay on the floor under the sink, next to Roman's- Dean's was thrown haphazardly at the foot of his bed outside-one pouch on the side already unzipped and the white cap of the tiny pill bottle poking out. Roman had probably used the bottle beforehand (he'd taken a pretty nasty bump that night) and forgotten to close the bag. Seth leaned down and snatched the pill bottle out, wincing as his shoulders stretched and the pain raced to spread across them. He was already forming a plan to further relieve the pain-running one of the white washcloths under the sink using water as hot as he could stand and then wringing it out to make a makeshift heat pad for his shoulders-when he straightened and actually looked at himself in the mirror. The minute he caught sight of his reflection, he froze, plan lost, any traces of sleep evaporating completely.

Seth slowly reached up and combed his fingers through his hair, from root to end. His hand came away with so many soft, downy feathers that it looked like a pillow had exploded over his head. Feathers?

Did his pillow have a tear in it somewhere?

He shook out his hair for good measure and a shocking amount of the tiny white feathers came tumbling from it, dancing to the floor around his bare feet. One had even found itself clinging to his beard. Grumbling under his breath about cheap pillows, Seth unscrewed the bottle cap and downed the pill dry. He reached back then, rubbing grimly at his aching shoulder blades, and suddenly froze. Grimacing as he stretched his arm further to reach, he felt an icy sensation creeping up his spine as his fingers ghosting over a lump jutting from his shoulder. It was sensitive to the touch, felt rubbery and smooth, roughly about the size of an egg, and felt as though it were covered in the same downy feathers he'd found stuck in his hair.

Seth's heartbeat skipped frantically, his still-sleep mind clouded with fatigue and fear of what-the-hell-is-that, and he pursed his lips tightly as he slowly turned in the mirror.

It was kind of…gross, actually, the fleshy little stumps that stuck out from his shoulder blades like deformed knots. Despite being covered in the tiny feathers, Seth could see the way they grafted perfectly into the rest of his skin-no seams or healing scars that told him how they had been put there-albeit being a little pink like new skin tended to be. But how had they gotten there? They hadn't been stuck there when he'd showered earlier (well, actually, they had been-they were only two little pinkish spots on each shoulder blade at the time-but he hadn't noticed), and either Roman or Dean would have told him if they'd noticed them before he'd crawled into bed.

But there they were, on either shoulder, pink and new and young.

At least he knew where the pain was coming from.

It figured the one time that Dean actually woke up on his own Seth would be in some sort of predicament. Never mind that it was only to piss, he was awake and groggy, and in a one-track mood: get in, use the bathroom, get out, sleep, and Seth was about to get in the way of that. He stumbled to the door, only really registering the occupied bathroom after standing before the door and seeing the thin strip of light peeking from under the jamb. He shut his eyes and exhaled deeply. "Seth?" he called in a low voice that was vaguely annoyed and weighted with sleep, and leaned his forehead against the door with a soft thump.

Inside, Seth jumped, tearing his eyes away from his reflection and swearing under his breath. He was fully awake now after having been startled by the appearance of stumps. "Dean? You're awake?"

Of all the times!

"Affirmative, Captain Obvious," came the sarcastic reply. "You got clothes on?"

Seth furrowed his brow. "Um…yes?"

"Great, then I'm coming in."

Seth was pretty sure that he'd shut Dean's fingers in the door with the speed he'd flown from his perch on the sink to the door, throwing himself against it and holding the plastic knob, wincing as he heard Dean thump against it when it immediately slammed back in his face. "Seth, what the hell?" He wasn't shouting, only raised his voice to normal speaking level, still gruff with sleep.

"What do you want?" Seth called from behind the door, probably speaking louder than necessary. "Christ, to use the bathroom, why else? What are you even doing?" Dean grumbled back. Seth looked around the bathroom, still pressed against the door, and his eyes fell on the light switch. He quickly turned out the lights, wrenched the doorknob, yanked the door wide open, earning a startled yelp and a strangled swear from Dean as he fell into the open bathroom, and scrambled past in the darkness. A glorious tidal wave of expletives saucy enough to make a sailor nervous came tumbling from Dean's mouth, only muffled slightly by the bathroom door closing behind him and the bed sheets as Seth burrowed under them.

Admittedly, he felt kind of childish hiding under the covers like that. Like there's a monster in the bathroom (to be honest, he wasn't wrong) that would eat him if he caught him. He sighed into the pillow, wrapping his arms under and around it, the cool seeping across the warm skin of his forehead. He couldn't say that he was overreacting, because if you woke up with feather-stumps on your back, wouldn't you raise Cain to your deformed reflection too? But still, that didn't dispel the heat of self-embarrassment from his already rosy face.

The bathroom door opened with a loud thunk and Seth immediately shrank under the sheets. He could hear Dean's heavy footfalls as he plodded back to bed and as they neared, a heavy-handed fist collided with his back, right between his shoulders. Seth practically ate the pillow to keep from screaming.

"Ass," Dean mumbled and went back to sleep.