blood rushes to ilya's dick so fast he almost blacks out. baby. he pulls away. shane whines again, pulls again, begs again, "nononono don't stop, baby, please--"

"say it again," he croaks. he'd meant it to come out stronger than that, but he's fighting shane's hold and flailing for the lube and trying to slick himself all at once while his brain goes baby baby baby he called me baby i'm his baby.

"please."

"not that. what did you call me? call me that again."

he lines himself up while shane tries to collect himself. finally recognition lights his eyes. he sniffles. "...baby?"

ilya sinks into him with a groan. shane's tighter than they usually like, but he keeps pressing forward anyway, through the stretch, through the heat, through their combined cries of pleasure, and he fucks shane until neither of them can speak.

after that, shane quickly learns calling ilya "baby" is the quickest way to make his brain stop working. ilya gets him a ginger ale from his parents' fridge, shane says "thank you baby" and ilya walks into the wall. they're coming off the ice after practice, shane says "hey babe don't forget--" and ilya trips over his own skates and almost causes a ten-Centaur pileup. shane says "babe will you--" and ilya stands up so fast he bangs his knee on the table.

but he never gets embarrassed no matter how ridiculous he looks, and he never chirps back no matter how relentlessly he's mocked. if anything, he leans into it all, puffing out his chest and playing up his reactions until shane's belly laughing with delight.

my venmo is @str-ngeloop.

By the end, we are able to see that Niall is a conniving liar, lacking in empathy and a sense of duty to others, a misogynist who is content to treat women and children as collateral, unwilling to take offered opportunities (even as an adult) to self-reflect and to improve himself. He is cruel and petty and selfish. His own suffering is where the world begins and ends.

Ruben is a violent rapist, a murderer, a bully, a lazy sexist, and a brute. His self-image is as fragile as spun sugar, and he holds life cheaply enough that people (both men and women) may be considered merely things to be destroyed and obliterated, property to be held or discarded.

(They are, I think, both addicts).

And yet.

They are the products of their environments, as we all are. The choices that we are capable of making as adults are made possible by the nature of the mechanisms with which we are fitted in our formative years. How are we composed, mixed, alloyed, wired, patched, rigged up, constructed brick by brick, or chipped and chipped and chipped like the knapping of flint? (Pick your metaphor, I suppose).

Niall is bullied, abused, assaulted, raped, dismissed, mocked and belittled, again and again and again. As a child, as an adolescent, as an adult. His opinions, views, fears, doubts and worries are minimised and invalidated repeatedly. If we are supposed to learn moral courage, compassion, and emotional intelligence from adults/elders/family, then who, precisely, was modelling any of these things for Niall?

Ruben is raped, abused, (implicitly) neglected, left behind and passed around from home to home, institution to institution. He is everyone's problem because he is no one's responsibility. (And certainly should never have been Niall's). If we are supposed to develop a sense of self-control as we grow, to understand boundaries and autonomy, to learn to recognise the necessary barriers between self and other, how, exactly, was Ruben meant to grasp any of this? Who is showing him the way, and making him feel safe?

Of course, these are explanations for their behaviour, not excuses. Or are they? Where does one end and the other begin? At what point can we say that decisions made as an adult should not be allowed to sprout from the muck of our childhood any longer? Our 20s, 30s, 40s? When, when?

And is it even possible to do otherwise?

I've personally been frustrated with reviewers and critics who have found Niall and Ruben crudely drawn or unbelievable, and most effectively read only as metaphors of masculinity, because those critics haven't the experience or wit to imagine real people living such lives.

I am in my 30s, a parent, a homeowner, employed, responsible, sensible...an adult by any metric. I still make decisions that have their origin in childhood experiences and trauma. It is draining to be constantly on guard against an earlier iteration of yourself, to act in opposition to wiring installed by a shoddy workman. And, obviously, there is plenty to be said for the way in which boys/men are permitted or quietly encouraged to react to trauma, and the ways in which women are disallowed these modes of expression. (And must, like women generally do, perform the cleaning up afterwards).

Nevertheless, reckoning with abuse means that it costs you to fight your worse instincts, just as it costs you to pursue them when you fall into old patterns.

So, when do you get to put down the burden of such work?