I think that Ruben is a man whose thoughts on his own sexuality probably just boils down to āa hole is a holeā and thatās all there really is to it
He is the type to think āitās not a problem as long as Iām doing the one fucking and donāt act like a fagā (aka effeminate/ālike a womanā/express literally any behavior that doesnāt meet the arbitrary threshold of āmasculine enoughā)
(You can fuck that guy in the dark of a prison cell but you can never been seen dancing in the sun by someone you love)
And I can believe Ruben fucked guys regularly in prison both 1) out of lack of access to women and 2) as part of transactions
Aka: you let me fuck you and I protect you from those guys trying to kick your assāwhich is just a dynamic that echoes what he had with Niall
(I bet he favors fucking guys who look like Niall)
I also would be genuinely shocked if he didnāt have at the very least a few drunken sexual encounters with other boys as a teen that ended in him threatening to smash their teeth in if they said anything to anyone about it (insert echoes of Alby here)
He straight up happily holds Niallās cock as he losses his virginity via proxy to Mona
And then thereās his comment during spin the bottle that goes something like āwhat youāre not man enough to kiss another man?ā
Those donāt strike me as the actions of a guy who hasnāt cum across/in another guyās body at least a few times by that point, imho
Itās the concept of bottoming that Ruben would refuse to entertain because thatās truly āgayā aka āweakā in his mindāespecially because I think weāre suppose to infer from the shouting match he and Niall had in the field before the trial that Ruben has likely experienced some form of sexual assault as a kid
As a result, he cannot approach sexual encounters from a place of vulnerability or true reciprocityāsex is something you ādoā or ātakeā from another person in his eyes
