"God told you they were sixteen feet. They're all sixteen feet." Lucifer leaned back against a tree, his black curly hair pushed back behind his shoulders.

"I want them bigger."

Lucifer rolled his eyes. "Why?"

"They're not big enough, duh." Carrighan turned to glare at his friend, his wings stretched out. No one could say they were quite a pure white, more a very, very, very light grey. Carrighan didn't care; Carrighan loved his wings and was very vain about them. Hence wanting them bigger. "I want them bigger than everyone else's, even yours."

Lucifer rolled his eyes. "Fine. But how do you expect to make them bigger? Go to God and ask him to make them bigger? You know he won't do it, he'll tell you that it's playing favorites." He didn't sound interested by it though he did sound a bit sour in his words.

Carrighan closed his wings and took a seat on a tree stump. He rubbed his chin as he stared off into space, trying to think of a way. Finally he spoke up, "Break them. If you break a chunk of a limb off of a tree, that piece grows back."

"You want me to break your wings off?" Lucifer's eyes were wide and full of skepticism.

"No, you dumb ass! Break them inside, break just the bone then hold them apart, see if the bone grows together at the distance."

Lucifer stared at his dark haired friend. Carrighan had always been a bit different from the way he looked –shoulder length black hair, tan skin, black eyes, long thin body, those light grey wings- to the way he acted and Lucifer saw potential in him for something great. The two had been friends since day one, back when things were still happy with the big man though since then things had been going downhill and quickly.

Could he do this? Could he possibly put his best friend through large amounts of pain?

Yes, yes he could.

"All right, let's try this, Carrighan." He got up and rubbed his hands together, watching the other get up as well. "Turn around." He walked up to his friend waiting for him to turn. Once he did, he grabbed the man's wings and in a quick moment, snapped the bone not far from his back.

Carrighan cried out in pain and almost fell forward. He could endure the pain; he could withstand it for the final goal. It was all for the larger wings.

And that began the first of many, many weeks of pain.

Carrighan opened his eyes as he lay in bed and stared at the wall. He could feel the presence of the Angel behind him, sleeping soundly. Despite his anger, he let the Heaven sent annoyance stay in bed with him; even he couldn't deny the company.
He was uncomfortable though, very uncomfortable. He had been sleeping on his stomach for days and couldn't even roll onto his side without causing himself incredible amounts of pain. But if he had dealt with the breaking of his bones back in Heaven, he could deal with this here. After all it was just a deep cut into the bone at the base of his wings.

He pushed himself up his wings adjusting on his back causing him to cry out in mild pain.

The Angel next to him was awake and sitting up in a matter of seconds, a hand on the Hellion's shoulder. It caused Carrighan to wonder if the man had even been asleep.

"Are you all right?" he asked softly.

"Fine… I'm fine…" though he didn't sound it; on the contrary he sounded in a lot of
pain.

Demetrios frowned softly and pulled his hand back. "You don't have to be so cold…"

"Deme--"

"I know you're mad at me, but I'm just trying to help."

Carrighan sighed. "I know you are." And that was all he said. He didn't want to go into any more depth than that; he didn't want to start another argument. Sure, all relationships had their bumps and the lovers got into arguments from time to time and Carrighan wasn't going to say that they didn't have their little spats because they did. But lately, ever since the incident with the little girl, it seemed that all they did was argue. It probably didn't help that the Angel of Hell was good at holding grudges; very good if he could say so himself. Hundreds of years of saying he would never enter Hell and he had stuck to it… well except for a year ago but he didn't count that against his goal because that was for a good cause. This situation now though had nothing to do with that. That just showed how well he could hold his grudges and at this point in time, he was upset with his lover for not killing the child demon when he had first walked into the house.

Again Carrighan sighed. He didn't want to be mad at the Angel and frankly it hurt him to see the sadness on the goody two shoes face but he wasn't about to just give in. The Angel had to learn one way or another… but what was he teaching the other? Was there even a point to this anger? Maybe it was just Carrighan's pride that hurt more than anything. He had been had by a demon that looked like a six year old girl. And he hadn't realized that she was a demon!

Yea, it was probably his pride that was suffering now more than anything. The pain in his wing only stood to prove how much his pride hurt. Until it was better he would continue to be angry with the angel. Maybe he could make up for it later. Maybe.

He sat up on the bed, ignoring the movement of his wings as best he could.
This sucked a lot. He couldn't put them away because then the bone would heal wrong and he would probably never be able to fly again.

FUCK! He hadn't spent all that time all those years ago just so that his wings
wouldn't be able to work now. Damn it. He was screwed and not in a pleasurable way.

For the third time in that five minute period, he sighed.

"Carrighan, what's wrong?"

Carrighan looked back at Deme, but didn't say anything. He didn't have to; the
Angel knew what the look said: he was silently asking 'what?'

"You keep sighing."

Carrighan looked away and shrugged. Bad idea. He groaned and fell forward a bit, his body shaking slightly. He felt a cool touch between his wings on his back. It helped like ice on a sprained ankle.

"I'm sorry."

Carrighan huffed.

It was Deme's turn to sigh.

"What's wrong?" Carrighan asked in a soft voice.

"I don't like you mad at me."

"Deme, I'm not getting into this with you right now." He tensed up slightly as he felt arms slip around his waist, legs coming around to sit on either side of his own. A cheek came to rest against the area between his wings where the hand had been before. He didn't fight it off; he could even say he wanted the connection.

"How many times do I have to say I'm sorry?" He was at a loss of what to do to make it up to his lover, the only one he had ever loved. He supposed that he should be grateful that Carrighan was still there and hadn't just up and left. He should be grateful for that but he wasn't sure what was worse, Carrighan being there in person but not talking to him or Carrighan just not there at all. He decided that it would be worse if his Angel of Hell wasn't even there.

He also decided -for about the umpteenth time in the past few days- that he had
severely fucked up. And he knew that Carrighan had every right to be mad at him. But could Carrighan really blame him for it? He was, as the Hellion enjoyed saying, a goody two shoes Heaven sent white winged freak. And the girl had looked like such a sweet child and for a whole month before that dreadful day she had been the sweetest thing.

"You're crying."

Demetrios lifted his head. He hadn't even realized that he was until the words were spoken. How had Carrighan known? He looked down and saw that there was a wet line shining down the center of the man's back. Well that explained that. "I guess I am." It was then that he realized Carrighan never answered him. "You never answered my question, Carri."

Carrighan was quiet then stood up, the hands pulling away from his stomach. "I need to go out for a while." There was no room for argument.

"When will you be back?"

Carrighan shrugged and left the room, heading down the hall.

Demetrios sat there, listening until he heard the front door open and close.

Days passed with no word. The Angel did all he could to keep his hands and mind busy. He washed the dishes then rewashed them to make sure they were clean. He stripped all the beds in the house and washed the linens then remade the beds with new sheets. He hand washed the couch, wiped down the TV, and dusted the whole house. All the while, he would watch the door, check to see if it was opening and Carrighan was walking in. He never did.

Those days turned into a week and Deme was running out of things to do. He decided to arrange the movies in alphabetical order. Rainey days were good days for movies, right? He would have organized them by main actor then in ABC order, but since a large part of the collection of movies was Carrighan's porn –that Deme bashfully watched when Carrighan was busy working on his car to possibly learn a few new things- he didn't think he'd be able to find an actress or actor in those to do it by. No pun intended.

He had all of the DVDs pulled out –save for the porn- and was getting them into the order he wanted them when there was a knock on the door. He lifted his head and wondered who it could be. Then panic struck his heart as he thought that maybe it was Perish there to tell him that Carrighan was dead or never coming back or something. His wings lifted him from the ground and carried his to the door quicker than he had ever moved before.

He pulled the door open quickly, almost knocking himself in the face with it, just to be greeted by no one. He stepped out the door and looked around, rain falling into his blonde hair and down his face.

Nothing.

He was about to step backwards into the house when the door slammed, hitting him in the ass. He jumped and fell down the two steps that led from the door to the drive way. He looked up from the puddle of water, glaring through the rain drops at the door, when he noticed a string coming from the handle. His blue eyes followed the string from its point of origin and off into the trees at the other end of the driveway. He frowned and got up. Was someone playing some kind of trick on him?

He looked at the house door, thinking he should wait there for Carrighan to come back. But the string was too alluring. He wasn't sure why it was, he normally wasn't grabbed by these sorts of things, knowing full well that they could be a trap. But this string he didn't think was a bad string leading him to his doom. So he followed it into the trees.

Once in the tree cover it wasn't raining too hard, but the leaves were falling from their homes and made it easier for the water to pass through. He shook his wings a bit to get the water off just to end up more drenched himself and water covering the white feathers again.

The string led him farther into the trees. He looked back behind him, wanting to turn back and wait for his love to come home, but something pulled at him to keep on the way he was going.

Five minutes and two trips later, Demetrios came out into a clearing where the rain was falling harder. Seemed the storm had picked up in the time that he'd been hiking.

In the center of this clearing was a door hooked up to a door frame.

That was all.

The string was tied to the door handle. He walked up to it and stared. Suddenly there was a knock on the door and he jumped away from it. The knock came again.
He reached for the handle and slowly turned. It was unlocked and pulled towards him.

On the other side of the door was the Fallen Angel Demetrios had been expecting at the house. His heart began thudding away in his chest and ears. "Perish?" he half managed to croak.

Perish gave a small nod. He was soaked and his normally spiked up white blonde hair was stuck to his face.

"Where is he?! Is he hurt?! Is he… is he…" he covered his mouth, unable to bring himself to say it.

"You're at the wrong door."

Deme blinked in confusion, rain pouring down his face. "What?"

"You're at the wrong door. He said it clearly." He nodded back towards the house.
"What you want is back that way."

The Angel looked over his shoulder then back at the Fallen one. "He's at home?"
Perish nodded.

Demetrios turned and pushed off the ground, spreading his wings and dodging through the trees to get back to the log cabin. He knew he should have stayed at the house. He grabbed the door handle when he made it home and tossed open the door. "Carrighan?!" he yelled, panting slightly as he dripped onto the wood floor.

Carrighan raised both eyebrows as he stood a few feet from the door way. He shook his head. "You're soaking wet."

Deme froze as he saw the man he loved. He wanted to do something other than stand there. Jump on, hug, touch, kiss, walk up to, anything but stand there and stare, but he couldn't seen to bring himself to do any of that. He was just so happy to see him that it actually kept him from moving.

Carrighan pulled his hands out from behind his hand and held up a large white towel. He walked forward and wrapped the towel around the Angel. It was warm, fresh from the dryer, or at least ten minutes in the dryer. Along with the towel he
wrapped his arms around Deme as well.

The Angel, finally relaxing, leaned into Carrighan, resting his head on his shoulder.
"You're home."

"Of course." He chuckled softly. "You're getting me wet."

"Why should you get to stay dry?" Deme pouted.

The Hellion shrugged. "Because. That's why."

"That's not fair."

"I'm not fair."

Deme rolled his eyes.

They stood in silence for a few minutes, listening to the rain fall outside.

"I'm sorry," Deme finally broke the silence.

"It's fine. I was… an ass and I shouldn't have been."

Deme gave a small smile. "I love you."

Carrighan pressed his lips to the Angel's temple, kissing the damp skin gently then whispered, "I love you too."