hiiiii! <3 alongside your art (which is gorgeous!!) i'm always so fascinated by the things you say about Ruben's sexuality. it's still such a mystery to me personally, and there's so much to think about. maybe you have some more thoughts you'd like to share?
hi!!! waugh oh my gosh it’s still a mystery to me too. one i’m trying to work through, though! maybe for me its not his sexuality itself that's the mystery (imo its likely he's gay, but no matter what he's clearly not straight) as much as how he compartmentalizes and thinks, or doesn't think, about his sexuality.
(under the cut because this got long haha)
at the very least young ruben is aware that he's somewhat attracted to other boys, but i think he would view any sexual attraction he has to men as a kind of side effect of his father's abuse. he full stop does believe he is heterosexual, but thinks of what happened to him as something that made him crooked. so even in situations where he becomes aroused by men (re: niall) he's easily able to write it off as a fluke and something he can't help (like a forced orgasm) and not as him experiencing actual same-sex attraction.
this isn't a revolutionary take whatsoever, but partially he clings so hard to niall immediately because niall is a boy he's extremely attracted to that he can focus his weird gay psychosexual energy on safely without threatening his own sense of identity for himself (see also: why niall isn't allowed to come out) and without being viewed as queer by outsiders. he's able to use the title of "brother" as a shield to explore that part of himself without major devastating consequence.
through how we see ruben react to others open queerness (alby & the game of spin the bottle, sexually harassing niall on his wedding day) it's established that to him homosexuality for men results in, and even deserves, sexual punishment and humiliation. actually we see something similar between him and joanna as well, when after spitting on joanna he tells niall ‘if she throws her body around like that she can't be mad when it comes back with spit on it’ (too lazy to find the direct quote but you know.)
from all that i think we can infer that confronting his own sexual interest in men for ruben would contort into, in his mind, a pretty world shattering case of 'i deserved it' regarding his childhood sexual abuse.
similarly to niall, his fabricated heterosexual identity is very much a means of survival. extending into his time at polmont as well, it's not as though a juvenile detention center in a conservative community the 1980s was going to be the place where a sexually confused teenage boy could figure his shit out---being at all queer would've made him a huge target for even more sexual abuse and harassment.
i am still kind of mulling over how ruben as an adult would understand this part of himself, but i'm leaning towards he probably consciously avoids entertaining it at all. i'm sure at this point it's so repressed and shoved down deep inside him, even if he did think about it would, again, be more so like something that was wrong with him when he was younger, because of what happened to him, but as something he's over now.
niall being kind of a helpless, non-man in ruben's eyes absolutely contributes to ruben being able to sweep his attraction to niall under the rug (as adults more than ever) but i'm too tired to get into that right now. thank you for asking! obviously i had a lot to say. more than even i thought....
okay but if niall is the one who took this photo - it links back (or to) the double date at ruben and mona's house, how ruben put on a show for niall, kissing and getting very touching with mona in front of him. showing off HIS wife, how STRAIGHT he is, how he is sexually virile, he FUCKS, he IS the man, he's NORMAL.
and in this ruben is looking straight at whoever is holding the camera. its not about mona at all. its about ruben and - probably - niall. its about ruben putting on another show for niall. another performance. the both of them cannot stop performing for each other.
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