When talking about the love between Ruben and Niall, it’s about so much more than asking, “Were they in love in a romantic way?” There are so many different forms that love can take. I think we get too caught up in trying to identify and label whether it is romantic vs. platonic vs. familial. Taking a page from Ruben’s book, I want to stick with the emotion.
Both boys felt incomplete or lacking in some way, but in each other, they found relief from that ache. Niall embodies the innocence Ruben lost to his father and the softness that life wrung out of him. Ruben embodies the rage Niall has suppressed in himself his whole life and the confidence that life leeched out of him early on. They found the missing pieces of themselves in each other, so how could they ever possibly give the other up fully? Yes, they love each other, but their love is trapped within an inescapable cycle of abuse because neither man learns how to let themselves be completely honest and vulnerable with their feelings.
Niall and Ruben claim the title of “brothers from another lover,” but Ruben is also a sort of paternal figure for Niall. Niall was without a father; he yearns for a dominant male figure in his life to protect him and for him to look up to and learn from. Whereas Ruben was robbed of an innocent childhood because of the abuse from his father, so he yearns to protect and provide for others. Except he was never taught how. He was never able to be gentle or empathetic because he was in constant survival mode. He was taught that being a man meant you possessed, you owned, you know what you want and you take it (his own words from Niall’s wedding). He views his loved ones as possessions that he’s entitled to treat any way he wants because they are his. He sees his potential children as a chance at redemption, telling Mona he will “break the cycle,” but he’s already failed at breaking the cycle with Niall. The way he treats Niall, from the pettiest punishments to the sexual aggression, is implied to be how his father treated him. But it isn’t just abuse. Ruben wants Niall to embrace his darker impulses. He wants Niall to be nasty and aggressive and violent. To Ruben, breaking Niall means helping him become the man he could be. The circumstances of Ruben’s life led to corruption being too entangled to extract from the concept of caring for someone. And no matter what Ruben does to hurt Niall, Niall continues to return to him, to love him, to want to be more like him because he’s built Ruben up in his head to be the perfect male specimen. This is what a man should be. Aggressive, sexual, powerful, imposing, everything Niall feels he isn’t. Niall can be vindictive and petty and find ways to punish Ruben back, but every time he does it only provokes Ruben into further aggression. So, as he confessed in the hospital, Niall hates how much power Ruben has because he gets it through violence and fear, things Niall feels he doesn’t have at his disposal except through Ruben, which makes him eternally indebted to him and desperate to stay by his side even as he yearns for independence and freedom.
Niall agonizes over his sexuality for many different reasons and several of those reasons can be traced back to Ruben. Growing up in the time and environment he did certainly is one factor of why Niall views his sexuality in such a negative light, but I think his attraction to Ruben early on is where a large portion of his shame comes from because they both hold so tightly to the idea that they are family. Another issue arises as we look at the way Ruben uses sex as a weapon or manipulation tactic. Ruben admits to having his suspicions about Niall’s sexuality, which just makes his constant groping and sexual assaults on Niall that much more targeted. He was asserting dominance and keeping Niall hooked on him at the same time, and he knew it. As we saw with his plan to accuse Alby of groping him, Ruben considered that a valid reason to beat him to a bloody pulp because “when you grope a man, you attack his soul.” But when he asked Niall to testify for him, he was asking Niall not only to suppress but villainize his queerness. That wouldn’t mean anything to him, but it meant something to Niall. Due to Ruben’s past abuse, any relations between two men would probably be painted as a power struggle, a way one man can demean the other. So, the cycle of abuse from his father is easy to fall into with himself as the aggressor this time. He turns it into a bond, carefully crafted in order to ensure Niall will always need him.
Niall says multiple times that he and Ruben are the same person, but Niall’s sexuality is a major distinction between the two. His sexuality is something Ruben can’t fully share. He can’t relate to it and only acknowledges it as a joke or to weaponize it. But I think there’s another aspect to why Ruben assaults Niall in these ways. Because when Niall looked him in the eyes and said, “He groped you,” Ruben wasn’t picturing Alby. Hearing Niall say it, Ruben felt supported for what was most likely the first and only time in his life. And then Niall took it back to protect Alby. Ruben felt violated after allowing himself that brief moment of vulnerability only for Niall to seemingly throw it back in his face. Niall pointed Ruben out as the villain, so Ruben returned as the villain. But Niall isn’t solely a victim either. Just as Ruben uses Niall’s sexuality against him, Niall easily manipulates Ruben’s repressed emotions against him. He knows Ruben is a pressure cooker, that the only way he releases his emotions is through violence. He becomes an expert at redirecting Ruben’s anger away from himself, then he bears witness to the carnage Ruben creates as atonement for deflecting it in the first place. Whether he embraces it as part of the bargain or not, Niall carries the weight of the guilt that Ruben doesn’t feel.
And then we get to the finale. We finally see some vulnerability and honesty from both men. Niall comes out, Ruben is accepting and even explicitly shares the details of his father’s abuse. Once again, he has allowed himself to bare his soul to Niall. And once again, Niall betrays him. He admits to sleeping with Mona and getting her pregnant. Ruben’s joy flees in an instant. The animalistic rage he unleashes on Niall in the barn is terrifying, but the aftermath of it hit me harder. Ruben grunting and panting, staring at Niall’s body in a detached manner. Niall was a possession, maybe his favorite one, but still, just another possession. And that possession got too brazen. It took what it wasn’t meant to take. So, Ruben had to retaliate. This attack was very different from his usual ones though, more intimate. Instead of stomping his head into the ground, he wanted no space between them. He wanted to be right on top of Niall, looking into his eyes as he suffocated him, screaming that he loved him. Niall, always so desperate for that love, finally got the full force of it. Because that was Ruben’s love. The possessive, selfish, all-consuming love of a child. A broken child who breaks all his favorite toys and only musters up an apathetic grunt as he surveys the destruction, because his hands have only ever known how to tear things apart.
For All Story Lovers! 