Two Sides of the Same Coin
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Summary
Alby almost gives Niall something honest.
Ruben gives him something familiar.Series
- Part 1 of Two Sides of the Same Coin
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Ruben takes Niall to the last petrol station before the dark road out of Dilkennie.
The last bus is already gone. Oxford is somewhere down south. Court is waiting. Ruben has nothing left to offer except the ugliest version of himself.
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- Part 2 of Two Sides of the Same Coin
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They have thirty-five minutes before the train home.
Ruben buys four photographs and gets one confession he cannot bear to keep.
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- Part 3 of Two Sides of the Same Coin
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After a bar fight in Glasgow, Niall steals Ruben’s bike keys and drags him onto the night bus before he can get them both killed.
Ruben is drunk, bleeding, and furious. Niall just wants to get him back to the halls.
Then Ruben starts talking about the showers.Series
- Part 4 of Two Sides of the Same Coin
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After visiting Maura in hospital, Niall and Ruben take a cab back to Ruben’s house in Kelvinside.
The driver is Gus, the boy who once made Niall’s school years hell, and the man Ruben once beat bloody for it.
The meter keeps running. So does everything else.
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- Part 5 of Two Sides of the Same Coin
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Ruben calls it a patch
Black ink over ugly skin. A joke over a scar. A filthy mouth, a big body, a lifetime spent making himself impossible to use
Then Niall touches his wrist and Ruben learns there are some things even black ink can’t keep buried
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- Part 6 of Two Sides of the Same Coin
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А spiritual continuation of The Patch, told through five missing scenes.
These are smaller, warmer pieces: lighter, kinder, and more forgiving than the main story. They return to Niall and Ruben through side moments, jokes, pauses, habits, and almost-normal days.
The collection echoes The Patch throughout, but approaches it indirectly: through memory, tenderness, shame, and the strange little mercies that survive around the damage.
Series
- Part 7 of Two Sides of the Same Coin
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Summary
Niall takes the long way home because the short way has boys in it.
It does not help.
By the time Ruben finds him, bloodied and soaked through in the street, the worst of it is already done, except for the part where someone has to say it out loud.
Series
- Part 8 of Two Sides of the Same Coin