welcome to hell

but it IS there from the start.

In ep1 Niall does Ruben's exam and doesn’t say anything about it, proving he can easily achieve something Ruben struggles with. Ruben feels as humiliated as he's grateful, so he sets up the Mona thing, and makes sure to tell Niall the morning after that the only reason Niall can call himself a man now is because Ruben arranged it. And the way he delivers the truth is strategically designed to degrade Niall and reassert his masculine superiority over him.

And that’s the crux of their entire relationship: Ruben’s affection and care comes with a heavy dose of emasculation and violence, where Niall is always left to pick up the pieces and clean after the storm of Ruben’s messes. There’s a whole moment in the scene where the viewer is left staring at Niall’s face, and the music has this uncomfortable quality to it, and you can tell this was a blow to his ego, this hurt him. But this is how Ruben looks while mocking him,

and Niall is too gay and in the closet and has the biggest crush on Ruben to think clearly (the hash probably had some influence too). Plus, if he rejects Ruben’s “gift”, he forfeits his entrance to the Men’s Realm. In his mind he has more to lose if he pushes Ruben away than if he accepts Ruben’s brotherhood proposal.

From Ruben’s POV, he’s just established a bond where he is the superior one, the big brother, the protector and instructor; the one that guides Niall into the adult world, but keeps him in a position where Niall never surpasses him or becomes independent, because he likes that Niall needs his protection, his strength; likes that Niall needs him around to have fun, to enjoy life, to do the things Niall alone wouldn’t dare to do. In the return, Ruben gets to enjoy the privileges that come with being close to Niall, something that will be made more apparent in ep2.

On another note, I think Ruben was always aware that Niall was attracted him, but never said anything about it because, from his perspective, it would corrupt their relationship, the “purity” of a familial relationship. If Niall wants his body, wants to have sex with him, it means everything else in their relationship, everything Niall puts up with, are nothing more than obstacles on the way of getting Ruben; a means to an end. He views homosexual sex (and being raped by a man) as something with the capacity to emasculate a man to the point of no return, because that’s how it felt for him when his father, a man he clearly loved as a child loved a parent, abused him. From his POV, his father only treated him well because he wanted to fuck him. I can’t imagine how that must have felt, to be unmade by someone that’s meant to protect you. That’s why, at the lowest points of their lives, Ruben used Niall’s desire for him against him: he gropes him and sexual assaults him as a way to hurt him and degrade him; it’s just another form of violence. The rest of the time, he pretends he doesn’t notice and guides them both to more heterosexual pastures, as if trying to hypercorrect them both.

Nevertheless, the fact that Niall has to hide his attraction to Ruben, hide his queerness, both of which Ruben is secretly aware of in some way, give Ruben an edge over Niall in the masculinity competition. Because Ruben is the better pretender and no one can tell what happened to him, and Niall is not as good as lying, it means that Ruben is superior.

In ep2, Ruben makes clear over and over how much it bothers him that Niall is going to college and living the high life for free; that Niall gets to live with two girls, with a grant to pay for his studies and his life expenses. There is not a conversation between them in the episode where he doesn’t bring it up in some way.

Objectively, it has nothing to do with Ruben that Niall got all that, but his mind works in fascinating ways lol, so from his POV Niall took something he didn’t get. The only thing that assuages him is that if they share it, then it’s his too. Like a parasite, Ruben sweeps into Niall’s college life taking control of every space with aggressive charisma and assertiveness. Niall both admires and resents everything that comes effortlessly to Ruben: being charming, acting the appropriately heterosexual macho man. He lives in his shadow and enjoys is as much as hates it.

In ep3, Niall took away Ruben’s freedom and his time with his mother. This, after Ruben made himself vulnerable to him by admitting he was scared of going to prison and leaving his ill mother alone. In the hospital scenes 13 years later, Ruben will throw in Niall’s face the way he sees what happened: that Niall couldn’t stand seeing Ruben doing well, escaping the consequences of his violent acts, and had to take everything he’s achieved from him. Not only because, from Ruben’s POV, he wanted to win against Ruben, but also to get rid of Ruben by sending him to prison, and finally live his own life away from him.

Ruben says Niall is bitter because no matter how much he tries he can never stand on the same level as Ruben, let alone surpass him; Niall is bitter that that so much of his life revolves around Ruben. In Ruben’s words, he’s king of the world and Niall is a gutter rat with pretenses of grandeur. He’s the reason Niall has “meaning in his miserable life”; he was born with “status” while Niall has had to scrap on to get even a lick of what’s like to be like Ruben. (And Ruben puts a lot of emphasis in the fact he was naturally born that way, which is why it will crush him later when he finds out about his infertility.)

But by ep4, more than a decade after the trial, Ruben’s already had his revenge: he has a wife, a house, a car, a good salary that allows him to provide for Lori and Niall, on top of all his other expenses. While he’s living the good life, pulling himself together; Niall is squirreling away, in the lowest of the low, having to depend on him. Ruben had everything against him, and still came out on top, he surpassed Niall, as it should be, who had all these opportunities to advance in life and wasted them.

And, supposedly, Ruben was fine keeping his distance from Niall, but Niall reappearing in his house robbed him of the pretense of respectability, the pretense that he was over it, over their relationship; Niall comes back to torment him and takes away Ruben’s peace of mind. On top of that, Niall is also the living reminder of everything that’s wrong with Ruben, as it’s made apparent in the hospital scene. No one else in their family will speak the truth to Ruben’s face about the awful things he has done but Niall. Niall is as much an essential part of how Ruben defines his sense of self as well as the bitter reminder of his worst tendencies.

They arrive at an impasse when Niall admits he’s also been tormented by thoughts of Ruben, and acknowledges he was bitter of Ruben’s success, essentially saying something like “you’re a fuck-up, but I’m a worse fuck-up, and I’m fucked up over you, so there”; it recalibrates their relationship to something like what they had before, except worse because from then on Niall is economically dependent on Ruben, and later Ruben will order him to do his bidding and turn him into his housemaid bitch.

Fast forward to their dynamic in ep5: to overcompensate for the things that are falling apart in his life, we’re told Ruben is always making out with Mona in front of Niall (and Ava), flaunting his supposed hypersexuality, his and Mona’s desire for each other; he also hides the fact he was sacked, because he can’t allow himself to lose the role of Provider, of the successful Big Man that takes care of everything. But Niall finds out about the infertility thing from a drunk Mona, and because he takes his petty wins where he can, he announces to Ruben Ava is pregnant, knowing it will hurt Ruben; and he does it because Ruben has just reminding him of his own patheticness with the intent to keep Niall on his place, doing what he commands him to.

Hell, the only reason Niall agrees to Ava’s pregnancy is because it will give him an edge over Ruben. And, from Ruben’s POV, he’s taken the chance to be a father from Ruben, a part of being a man that Ruben can’t access. A few years ago, Ruben was crowing about being born with a status Niall could only dream of, and then this happens. And of course, the thing that Ruben fixates on is Niall’s dick, the instrument of his manliness, something he was born with that Ruben lacks.

Ruben lost the masculinity competition this time, he’s a wreck about it, can’t deal with it, and does some rapey things that could have escalated to actual rape if Avan hadn’t come out, because his ego is too fragile to handle it, because he had to reassert his power and authority over Niall somehow.

He tries to patch up his slip up by bringing flowers to Ava, sneakily insults Niall (“You know, Ava, you’re going to be a great mum. And Niall, you’re’ going to be a dad.”), and in the process flips the situation on his favor by bringing up the money Niall owns him.

So Niall may have taken a win this time, something Ruben really wanted, but he is going to put Niall back on his place. And Niall catches up quickly, and implies the truth Ruben doesn’t want known in front of Ava, that Ruben is infertile, and makes him feel humiliated in the process.

And the thing is Ruben guards his weaknesses and vulnerability from the world, and from Niall even more, because he doesn’t want Niall to see them and use them against him, unless it is convenient or safe to do so. Mona took his secret and gave it to Niall, that’s what pissed him off the most. He gave Niall a weapon.

Then Niall finds out Ruben has been unemployed for a year, and even when Ruben is opening up to him about what it means to his sense of self to be the Provider, that he can’t declare bankruptcy because that’s not what men do, Ruben again brings up their competition, invoking Niall’s words from the past: Niall can rejoice in his defeat, because he was right that Ruben would eventually fuck up. Niall can take the win this time. Ruben can’t have a family and he doesn’t have a job, he’s full of debts. This, too is something Niall took from him, in his eyes: his sense of superiority and success.

I think Ruben knew deep down Baird wasn't his biological child, and as long as it wasn't voiced it would have been fine, because he could still Pretend. and he's willing to live the lie because, with Baird's existence, he has everything he's ever wanted: he is a dad and he’s going to make a family and he's going to have a good life with Mona and Baird when he comes out. He and Niall are both dads, which marks them as Grown Men that finally won the game and proved their masculinity in a tangible way. It’s a truce. Ruben doesn't have to worry anymore about being lesser than Miall in terms of dick size and fertility and social status. They're more or less "even" in all the way that matters, he can live with that, and at the end of the day he is still physically superior, Niall is still fears him and is obsessed with him which gives him control in their relationship, etc. etc.

But Niall flips this dynamic completely on its head when he exposes the truth of Baird’s parentage, and the way he exposes, voiced as if designed to emasculate Ruben, it’s the worst thing of all for Ruben.

And the circumstances surrounding the reveal, the built up:

-Ruben in prison, in a position where Niall is free therefore has more power over/than him;

-it happens after Niall has “degraded” himself by coming out, confessing his secrets and fears, which allows Ruben to "degrade" himself too and open up about how his dad abused him. Niall coming out annuls part of the power Ruben has over him. And it is key that Ruben opens of after ALL THAT because this is the secret Ruben has been guarding his whoooole life. In opening up about it, Niall has taken away the façade Ruben’s built up his whole life.

-they were unveiling little petty, inconsequential things from the past, and it comes out of Niall’s mouth as that; but for Ruben, it feels like Niall has destroyed his manhood, taken everything that makes Ruben a man.

While Ruben has lost a family he hasn’t even got to enjoy, is rotting in prison, drowning in despair, grief and anger, has been unmanned to his core, Niall is, from Ruben’s POV, free from him, free to be gay and a successful writer profiting from telling Ruben’s story; free to get married with another man and have two sons he doesn’t even want. For Ruben, Niall has essentially taken his life, so he returns to take back Niall’s, to make him hurt. There’s nothing more he can do; violence, both physical and sexual, is the only thing left in him to reassert his sense of self.