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The days had already bled together for Rafe, had been bleeding together for a long time. Maybe since he was a kid. He'd lived his life in a smear of visions and distractions and carnal pleasures, none of which he could ever hold on to for long. Sometimes it felt real, sometimes it didn't.
Being in a cell only made it worse.
He paced a lot. It reminded him of the day Ward brought him and Sarah to the Greenville Zoo. He remembered the lion that prowled back and forth, back and forth, eyes glassy, ears flicking, jowls hanging to show yellowed teeth. Remembered thinking, I'll never live like that. I'd go crazy.
Most of all, Rafe remembered clutching Ward's hand.
He happened to be pacing his cell just like that damn lion when one of the county jail officers approached the bars.
"You've got a visitor," the officer told him, making Rafe stop in his tracks.
"My dad?" he croaked. "Is it my dad?"
The officer didn't say a word, just unlocked the cell door and swung it open. After a moment's hesitation, Rafe slipped forward and let himself be wrangled into cuffs.
"It's my dad, right?" Rafe pressed once again; wordlessly, the officer gripped him by the arm and started leading him down the hall.
The visitation room was empty when Rafe was brought to it. Brisk and silent as ever, the officer sat him down, chaining him to the metal table by one wrist.
"Your visitor'll be with you in a minute," she mumbled, and left him there to wait, door clicking shut neatly behind her. It was a cold room. Rafe tugged down the sleeves of his jumpsuit, one leg bouncing with anticipation.
It was Ward. It had to be Ward.
Rafe's head snapped up when the door opened again. The voice hit him before the face, familiar like a repeating nightmare is, that signature twang:
"Tell me you ain't dropped the soap yet."
"What are you doing here?" Rafe demanded, head spinning like a carousel on acid. Barry. Barry, his dark hair tied hastily back like always, white wifebeater hugging him in the most obscene way.
Barry and his fucking nerve. Unbelievable.
"Figured you'd be lonely," Barry said simply, approaching the table to sit down across from Rafe. He leaned forward, oh-so satisfied, scarred elbows on the tabletop. "You lonely, country club?"
It took a moment for Rafe to pry his gritted teeth apart and say, "I've been keeping myself busy."
Barry raised an eyebrow. "Yeah? How?"
"Imagining what I'm gonna do to you when I get out of here," Rafe shot back, which made Barry grin, fluorescent light catching on his gold tooth.
"You ain't gonna do a goddamn thing, princess. I know for a fact you ain't."
Rafe narrowed his eyes. "Yeah? What makes you so sure?"
"I know you," Barry said simply, definitively, which cut deeper than any insult somehow. Stripped Rafe completely naked. Barry knew him. Barry saw him.
The thought made Rafe squirm in his seat.
"I hate you," he snarled, unsure what else to say, like an animal backed into a corner. Barry just snorted.
"Nah. I think you hate a lotta people, Rafe, but you don't hate me. Not even now."
That cut deep, too. Because it was true. Rafe didn't hate him. That feeling roiling in his gut, hot and parasitic – that wasn't hate, no matter how much he wanted it to be. It was want. It was all his rotten insides crying out the same thing at once: I need you. Come closer. Touch me, touch me, touch me.
It was too much, all of it was too much, where he was and what he'd done and who was sitting in front of him. Rafe's head started to pound, tension mounting like a wave behind his eyes.
He started to cry.
Rafe tried to choke it back at first, because it was just so fucking embarrassing. He didn't want to cry in front of anyone, but especially not Barry, who'd already played him for a damn fool. He felt like a stupid kid. A stupid, oversized kid who was in way too deep to ever really get out.
"I wanna go home," Rafe rasped, and for the first time ever, he saw Barry waver. The dark eyes, typically arcane pits, softened at the furthest edges. His brow twitched with the beginnings of a sympathetic furrow. It never did that.
All Barry said was, "I know."
"I was gonna take care of you," Rafe blubbered, all hot tears and bloodshot eyes. "I was gonna have your back, because– shit. And you fucked me over. You piece of shit, you fucking fucked me over. Why'd you do that, Barry? Huh? Why'd you do that to me?"
Barry sat there quietly for a moment, still looking Rafe in the eye. He'd never be afraid to do that. Maybe that's why Rafe wanted him so damn bad: no matter what he did, no matter how awful, Barry would never be scared of him. Because Barry had seen him at his very worst. Saw how deeply impulsive and paranoid and pathetic he was.
It was freeing, somehow.
"Wasn't an easy decision to make," Barry admitted at last, voice perfectly level thanks to an internal discipline Rafe could only dream of. But that discipline slipped when Barry laughed a little, wistful, and said, "Shit, I'm kinda starting to miss you out here, you crazy sonuvabitch. Sometimes I think you're all I've got."
They both went deathly still then, the words saturating the air around them like carbon monoxide. Rafe was instantly intoxicated by it, drunk off this rare sliver of light from inside Barry's padlocked brain – specifically the right side of it.
Barry missed him. Barry needed him.
Barry came to see him.
The revelation made Rafe brave, or maybe just needy. Needy enough to slide his free hand across the table and touch Barry's own. Rest unscathed fingers over calloused ones.
Barry studied the point of contact, and for a split second, Rafe had him startled. As if they'd never touched before. As if they hadn't done the most intimate, terrible things to each other with those same hands. Sex and violence, violence and sex.
But this moment didn't fit into either of those categories. And that seemed to short-circuit Barry's brain. Both of their brains.
The split second passed. Barry pulled his hand away, withdrawing himself, his eyes becoming pits again – the sliver of light swallowed up entirely. Rafe could only curl his fingers against the metal tabletop, helpless.
"I've gotta go," Barry told him, and Rafe felt panic rise from his gut all the way to his throat.
"Stay." It tore itself out of him like the instinctive whine of a dog. He just couldn't help it.
"I'm a big boy, Rafe," Barry replied, shrugging broad shoulders. "I've got shit to do."
He started getting up from the table then, and Rafe wanted to cry, to scream, to say something that would piss Barry off enough to make him start swinging. Anything to make him stay. Anything to make them touch. He'd take a broken nose over nothing at all.
But all Rafe could manage was, "Please."
Barry paused, one hand lingering on the tabletop. He looked down at Rafe like he was a curious, untouchable prince in some high tower, and Rafe looked up at him like he was split wide open.
"When you get out, you know where I'm at," Barry said at last, reaching out to pat one side of Rafe's face. "See you around, country club."
So Rafe watched as Barry pulled away, away from the table and across the room, across the room and out the door. He should've been happy to see him go. Barry was the one who'd landed him in jail in the first place.
He should've been happy.