salvation [rafe x barry]

i own you now

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does
not stand in the truth, because
there is no truth in him.
John 8:44

Barry liked Rafe.

Not in the sense that it was cool to hang out with him, or that he was a nice person or a good friend or anything like that. Really, there wasn't too much to like about Rafe, he was an arrogant, entitled, rich asshole with anger issues he didn't bother to let out on anyone crossing him the wrong way. He was insufferable to be around and somehow, Barry enjoyed that.

Because really, Barry thought of himself as someone to be insufferable to be around. He'd always been a rough kid, had been loud and ruthless, as much as he didn't mean to. Making the other babies cry when he was only a few months old by pushing to hard, playing too rough. He always did.

Growing up, Barry felt he could never be gentle, stomping through life like an AT-AT, bulldozing over relationships, people and anything dear to him. He used to have one of those, an AT-AT plastic toy, with three legs because he accidentally ripped one off the first day he got it. His mother used to say he was just like that, just her little rowdy. At some point, he became a big rowdy. And Barry always thought he was gay because of that, because he was just too harsh to touch a dainty little girl.

Rafe wasn't dainty. He was rough too, rough and violent and he wasn't the kind of person to break under Barry's touch or the constant mockery or thin veiled insults shot at him. In a way, he was just used to it, getting beat up and talked down upon and like that, Barry just smelled like childhood to him, like early memories flashing up in your head because you picked up the familiar scent of the laundry detergent your mother used to wash your sheets with except Barry smelled like weed and sweat, and motor oil.

Maybe the motor oil had just been Rafes bike though, and maybe the whole part about Rafe not breaking wasn't true either.
It was hard to tell, the smell of burnt flesh too prominent and the pain, the goddamn pain, as Barry pressed his wrist onto the burning hot exhaust.

Barry liked Rafe.

He liked him the moment he first saw him.
They met at the bonfire, a few years ago. A friend of him had dragged Rafe to the spot where Barry had sat with a bunch of guys smoking.

„Yo, Barry, meet my friend Rafe here", the guy named Brad had said, tattooed arm dangling over the shoulder of the rich boy, who seemed nervous and uncomfortable around the group of low lives so different from him in his clean peach colored shirt with an ironed collar. Barry thought, it looked cute.

„Do I look like I run a country club or..", Barry had replied with a sarcastic smirk, not moving an inch in his ragged old camping chair.

„I'm looking to buy drugs, alright", Rafe interrupted.

„Looking to buy drugs", Barry repeated chuckling and got up. Back then, they'd almost been the same height and Barry could look into the red eyes of the boy in front of him, piercing his. He had liked Rafe then and there, had liked the way the boy looked and acted, thought it would be so adorable to have his preppy rich boy face at the height of his hips, blue eyes glancing up.

He thought that Rafe looked gay, but to Barry and his friends all rich boys did, with their expensive clothes and hair plastered with gel, yet he hadn't dared to make a move, sold Rafe a bottle of adderall losing no words other than making a few jokes about him being a kook, and Barry was glad he didn't when Rafe and him started hanging out more and more, when Rafe dropped by his old trailer regularly and the boy sprinkled their conversations with consistent homophobic comments ever so casually.