it drips through

He might’ve already been weary of Alby bc of his own biases, class and homophobia playing a part on it, but I think it was Alby pushing Niall what did it. He saw red and attacked.

That said, I genuinely think at some point he stopped hitting Alby and was hitting his father instead, and I think that’s why it’s so important to him that Niall says that he was groooes during the trial.

Alby is violently made a proxy of Rueben’s father. Rueben alleging he was groped is a half-true in his head.

He knows Alby didn’t grope him, he knows that’s not why he hit him—tbh I’m not sure he even knows why he did—and he is aware he is using homophobia as a tool to benefit him and he just doesn’t care, because the thing is this isn’t abt Alby and him being gay, is abt him being groped.

Alby didn’t grope him, but he was groped. So does it matter? If it wasn’t Alby, if Alby’s face started to look like his father’s the more red stained it got? It’s half a confession, and still doesn’t justify what he did at all, nor what he wanted Niall to do for him.

I don’t think it’s Niall’s betrayal what really hurt him during the trial, it’s Niall’s denial what did. He needed Niall to belive him, Niall to see him, to say it out loud—not that “Alby groped him”, but that “He, Rueben, was groped”.

The dog, the real dog, yanks on the leash and asks the man to pull him back and hold him.

The man doesn’t, even as the dog begs, he’s too afraid to hold it at all—he thinks: ‘how can a dog own a man?’

But either way you turn, I'll be there

Open up your skull, I'll be there

Stuart Campbell and Richard Gadd as Ruben Pallister